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Lit- 



A RUSSIAN 
COMEDY OF ERRORS 



A RUSSIAN 
COMEDY OF ERRORS 

« 
WITH OTHER STORIES AND SKETCHES 
OF RUSSIAN LIFE 



BY 

GEORGE KENNAN 

Author of ** Siberia and the Exile System," etc. 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1915 



^1 



Copyright, 1912, 1915, by 
The Century Co. 

Copyright, 1897, by 
Houghton, Mifflin and Company 

Copyright, 1902, 1912, 1913, 1914, by 
The Outlook Company 



Published, February, 1915 



FEB 26 1915 

CU39374a 



To 

MY WIFE 

Comrade in Russia and * 'General Encourager' 

in all Ventures and Adventures 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 3 

II A SINGING BIRD OF PREY • ^^ 

III RUSSIAN " MOUSE TRAPS " . , 55 

IV A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 85 

V THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN . . . .111 
VI " A HEART FOR EVERY FATE " .... o .. 139 

VII "THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 179 

I THE CHECKERBOARD SQUARE 185 

II THE GIRL IN NO. 59 206 

VIII A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 237 

IX NAPOLEONDER 261 

X THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 289 



For permission to reprint the stories and sketches in- 
cluded in this volume I am indebted to the courtesy of The 
Outlook, the Century Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, and 
the Macmillan Company. 

(jr. K.. 

Broadwater, 

Baddeck, Nova Scotia, 
1915. 



A RUSSIAN COMEDY 
OF ERRORS 



A RUSSIAN COMEDY 
OF ERRORS 

I 
A EUSSIAN COMEDY OF EREORS 

THE young Russian Jew, Leon Khairanski, 
was in trouble. When the "underground'' 
office of his revolutionary newspaper, The Free 
Word, was discovered and raided by the St. 
Petersburg police, in June, 1879, he happened, 
by a fortunate chance, to be absent, and so 
escaped arrest; but he was forced to go into 
hiding, and after living a precarious existence, 
for two weeks or more, in the houses of his 
friends, changing his sleeping quarters almost 
every night, he determined to seek safety abroad. 
Getting out of Russia, however, is sometimes 
quite as difficult as getting in. Nobody can 
leave the Empire without presenting his pass- 
port and getting written permission from the 
authorities, and this Khairanski dared not at- 
tempt, for the reason that the passport on which 

3 



A RUSSIAN COMEDY OP ERRORS 

he was living was forged, and he had changed his 
name to correspond with it. He might as well 
give himself up to the police at once as go to the 
Foreign Office with forged documents and ask 
permission to leave the Empire. In this emer- 
gency, he thought of his friend Isaac Gordon — 
also a Jew — who was a clerk in one of the city 
banks. ^ Isaac was a man of about his own age, 
and of the same racial type. He was not con- 
nected in any way with the revolutionary move- 
ment ; had never even been suspected of "political 
untrustworthiness" ; and was, in every sense of 
the word, a "safe'' man. 

"If I can only borrow his passport for a few 
days," thought Khairanski, "I can get out of the 
Empire on it without the least difficulty. His 
reputation is good, and he might naturally 
enough be going to Germany on the business of 
his bank.'' 

THE LOST PASSPORT 

Acting promptly on this happy thought, Khai- 
ranski that night made his way to the rooms of 

1 There is a well known Jewish family in Russia which 
bears the Scotch name of Gordon [accented on the second 
syllable]. One of the most distinguished members of it was 
the poet and novelist, Leon Gord6n, originally Judah Loeb 
Ben Asher, who was born in Wilna in 1831, but who re- 
moved afterward to St. Petersburg. 

4 



A KUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

Isaac Gordon, who was then living in an apart- 
ment house on the Voznesenski Prospekt. He 
found his friend sitting at an open window, 
smoking a cigarette and listening to the faint 
music of an orchestra playing in a popular sum- 
mer resort on the Fontanka. 

^^Well! This is sl surprise!" exclaimed Gor- 
don in a cordial tone, as Khairanski entered the 
room. "Where have you been for the last 
month? I 'd about given you up for lost. I saw 
by the papers that the police had raided your 
newspaper office, and I did n't know but they 'd 
put you in a ^stone bag.' ^ Draw up a chair, take 
a cigarette, and account for yourself." 

Khairanski had dreaded to propose the pass- 
port scheme, partly because he knew that Gor- 
don did not approve of the revolutionary move- 
ment in the extreme form which it was then 
taking, and partly because the request that he 
had to make was one which involved the risk of 
serious consequences. Encouraged, however, by 
his friend's cordial greeting, he said : 

"I 'm not in a ^stone bag' yet, but I 'm likely to 
be, if somebody does n't come to the rescue. I 

2 A descriptive term invented by the Russian peasants to 
designate the oubliettes in the castle of Schlusselburg. It 
was afterward applied to any cell or dungeon in a fortress. 

5 



A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

have n't been to see you lately because I 'm ^ne 
legalni^ [an illegal person], and I didn't want 
to compromise you by coming to your apartment. 
You think, perhaps, that you know me, but you 
don't. Permit me to introduce myself — Ivan 
Bezpassportni [John Passportless] , formerly 
editor of The Free Word, and now a fugitive 
from justice." 

"What's happened?" asked Gordon seriously. 

"Nothing yet," replied Khairanski, "but some- 
thing 's going to happen as soon as the police find 
out where I am. I 've been dodging from house 
to house, at night, for two weeks, sleeping by 
turns in all the ^conspirative' quarters that I 
know. I 'm about at the end of my rope, and 
I 've come to you to ask if you '11 lend me your 
passport, and let me use your name, until I can 
escape into Germany." 

The expression of gravity in Gordon's face 
deepened. Laying down his cigarette, he closed 
the window softly, lowered the transom over the 
door, and then, returning to his seat, looked 
searchingly, at his friend and inquired in a low 
tone : 

"Have you become a terrorist?" 

"No," replied Khairanski. "Before God I 
have n't ! I 'm not guilty of any crime except 

6 



A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

editing a revolutionary newspaper. But that's 
serious enough in these days — it means penal 
servitude if I 'm arrested." 

Gordon seemed to reflect. 

"What am I to do without a passport, if I lend 
you mine?" he inquired. 

"It will only be for a few days," pleaded Khai- 
ranski. "I '11 send it back to you by registered 
post from Berlin. You 're not under suspicion ; 
your mail will not be opened ; and there is n't one 
chance in a hundred that you '11 need your pass- 
port before I return it to you." 

Gordon lighted another cigarette and med- 
itated. 

"Suppose that you 're recognized by one of the 
secret detectives at the frontier, and arrested 
with my passport in your possession? That 
may mean a term of fortress imprisonment for 
me." 

"It is n't possible I" said Khairanski. "I 'm 
not known by sight to the police in St. Peters- 
burg, still less to the detectives at the frontier. 
Your height, features, eyes and complexion cor- 
respond in a general way with mine. We don't 
look alike, but we should be described in about 
the same words. Your passport will fit me per- 
fectly; but if worst comes to worst, and I am 

7 



A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

arrested, I '11 swear that I stole your passport 
while you were away from your rooms." 

Gordon shook his head. 

"I 'm afraid that story would n't go," he said. 
"No man, in these days, leaves his passport 
around where it can be stolen." 

"But no question will ever be raised," said 
Khairanski eagerly. "The document will be in 
perfect order. You '11 have permission to leave 
the Empire and I '11 go in your place ; that 's all. 
There won't be the least excuse for raising the 
question of personal identity at the frontier. 
I '11 get out without a single inquiry." 

Again there was an interval of silence. 

"All right !" said Gordon at last. "It 's a risk, 
but for old friendship's sake, I '11 take it. But 
you 'd better stay with me for a day or two, and 
let the passport go to the authorities from my 
apartment. You 're fairly safe here, and when 
the permit comes — ^s' Bokhem !' " [Go, with 
God.] 

Three days later, Leon Khairanski, with Isaac 
Gordon's passport and a permit to go abroad in 
his pocket, took the night express for Berlin. 

After he had gone, Gordon felt increasing anx- 
iety with regard to the possible consequences of 
the irrevocable step that he had taken. He was 

8 



A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

not afraid of being called on to produce his pass- 
port while it was out of his possession ; but he did 
fear that Khairanski would be recognized, or sus- 
pected, by the frontier police, and that an inquiry 
would be made by telegraph with regard to the 
authenticity or ownership of his papers. The 
revolutionary movement had already taken a ter- 
roristic form ; the police were following up every 
clue which could possibly lead to the discovery 
and identification of conspirators ; and mass ar- 
rests, on general suspicion, were being made al- 
most every night in the "politically untrust- 
worthy" class. Jews, in particular, were the ob- 
jects of strict surveillance, because they had 
taken an active part in the revolutionary move- 
ment from the very beginning. On racial 
grounds alone Khairanski might be suspected and 
detained at the frontier, because his passport ex- 
plicitly stated that he was a Jew. 

The more Gordon thought of these things, the 
more apprehensive he became ; and in reflecting 
upon the course that it would be safest to pursue, 
he finally decided to pretend that he had lost his 
passport, and that Khairanski, after finding and 
advertising it, had been overcome by the tempta- 
tion to use it, as a means of escaping from police 
pursuit. In order to prearrange evidence which 

9 



A KUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERROES 

would support this story, he went to the office of 
the newspaper Golos, on the very night of Khai- 
ranskfs departure, and left there for publication 
the following advertisement : 

PASSPORT 

Found in the street, a lost passport, in the name 
of Gordon. The owner can obtain it by calling and 
identifying it at the apartment of Khairanski, Little 
Garden Street, No. 62. 

Unfortunately, Gordon could not remember, 
with certainty, the number of the house where 
Khairanski had lived. He thought it was "62" 
but he was not sure. A mistake, however, could 
not matter much, because nobody would ever 
claim the passport, and if there should be occa- 
sion to use the advertisement as a proof of the 
fixed-up story, it would be easy to explain the 
wrong number as a clerical or typographical 
error.^ 

Fear, however, is a bad counselor; and when 
Gordon, through apprehension, advertised as 
"found'' the passport that had never been lost, he 
committed a serious error. Then, when he lo- 

3 No directories were published at that time in Russian 
cities. A person's residence could be ascertained only 
through written application at a municipal address bureau. 

10 



A EUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERROKS 

cated Khairanski's apartment at Little Garden 
Street, 62, instead of 26 [the right number], he 
made a bad matter worse, and prepared the way 
for extraordinary and surprising consequences. 

Under the system of "preventive censorship," 
which was then in force in Russia, the contents of 
newspapers were submitted to two different sets 
of offlcials. Reading matter of all kinds went to 
the censor proper, who modified, red-penciled or 
prohibited such articles as seemed likely to have a 
"pernicious tendency," or to endanger the safety 
of the State by "exciting the public mind." Ad- 
vertisements, on the other hand, were sent to the 
police, who had full power of supervision and 
control. 

When the proof sheets of the Golos reached the 
central police station, on the night of Khai- 
ranski's departure from St. Petersburg, they were 
distributed among a number of subordinate of- 
ficials for examination. Advertisements of mer- 
chandise were only casually glanced at ; but par- 
ticular attention was given to notices of books 
and theatrical performances, as well as to 
"Wants," "Lost," "Found," "Funerals," and an- 
nouncements of lectures or meetings. When the 
short-haired, shabbily-uniformed officer to whom 

11 



A KUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERROKS 

the sheet containing Gordon's advertisement had 
been given, handed it in at the desk, the chief in- 
quired curtly, "Well, anything in it?'' 

"Nothing of importance, sir, unless, — there 's 
an advertisement of a passport found. It may be 
of no consequence, but it 's a little queer. Pass- 
ports are not often lost in these days." 

The chief took the slip and glanced at Gordon's 
advertisement. 

"They 're both Jewish names," he said. "Bet- 
ter look it up. No Jew ever lost a passport. 
Send a man to 62 Little Garden Street to inquire. 
Tell him to examine the passport carefully and 
get the full name, number, date, and place of 
issue." 

"Slooshioo S' " [I obey], replied the officer. 

Half an hour later, the second officer returned 
and reported, "No such man there, sir. I 
routed out the dvornik [janitor] and half a 
dozen of the lodgers. They all say that no Khai- 
ranski ever lived there." 

The chief reflected a moment and then said, 
"There 's something about it that is n't clean. 
Find out where Gordon and Khairanski live and 
arrest them both at eight o'clock to-morrow morn- 






mg. 

"There 's probably more than one man of each 

12 



A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

name/' suggested the officer respectfully. "We 
don't know which of them are implicated.'' 

"Well," said the chief impatiently, "arrest 
them all. There can't be more than a dozen of 
them. We ought to get something out of a lot of 
Sheenies like that. Have them taken, with all 
persons found in their rooms, to the Litovski 
Zamok, and lock them up in one of the large ka- 
meras ; we '11 sift them later." 

"Slooshioo S'." 

THE FUEL CARTRIDGE 

When Alexander Gordon, traveling salesman 
for The Fuel Cartridge Company of Indianapolis, 
finished his trip through Iowa and Minnesota, he 
had every reason to be satisfied with the results 
of his work. He had been showing and selling a 
newly invented appliance for the safe and expedi- 
tious kindling of fires in kitchen stoves. Acci- 
dents, due to the pouring of kerosene from half- 
empty cans upon slowly burning wood, had sug- 
gested to a thoughtful Hoosier the use of an as- 
bestos cylinder, half as big as a rolling-pin, which 
could be saturated with the petroleum, placed 
just inside the front damper, and set on fire. Ex- 
periment proved that the flame from it would ig- 
nite the most incombustible wood, and that the 

13 



A KUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERROES 

use of it would reduce the danger of accidental 
explosion to nil. 

A company had been formed to manufacture 
the device, under the name of "fuel cartridge/^ 
and salesmen had been sent into the field to intro- 
duce it. Gordon had been showing samples and 
establishing agencies in Minnesota, and had met 
with gratifying success. When he returned to 
St. Paul, after a week's campaign in the coun- 
try, he found awaiting him a telegram from his 
company, directing him to "report in Indian- 
apolis immediately for foreign service." He took 
the night express for Chicago, and at three o'clock 
on the following afternoon presented himself at 
the home office. The managing director greeted 
him cordially and said, "We 've sent Atkinson to 
take your place in the Northwest, and we want 
you to go to Russia. There ought to be a big field 
there for the fuel cartridge. The climate is cold, 
the winters are long, most of the people burn 
wood, and petroleum from the Baku wells is 
cheap. A cartridge is needed in practically every 
house. We want you to go to St. Petersburg 
and organize the business. How does it strike 
you?" 

"It suits me," said Gordon briefly. "When do 
you want me to start?" 

14 



A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

"The sooner the better," replied the manager. 
"I '11 have samples, circulars, and a letter of 
credit here for you to-morrow. Suppose you go 
to Washington for your passport and sail on 
Saturday's steamer?'' 

"All right," said Gordon. "I 'm on." 

"You '11 have to be careful and prudent," said 
the manager. "There 's a good deal of political 
disturbance in Russia just now, and it 's a des- 
potic government. Don't get mixed up with ni- 
hilists, and don't have any dealings with the of- 
ficials if you can help it. They 're said to be 
very arbitrary." 

"From what I know of Russian officials, said 
Gordon judicially, "they 're cocky because every- 
body knuckles down to them. The people have 
all been serfs, and they 're as meek and submis- 
sive as sheep. I saw a lot of them in Minnesota 
last week — ^spirit wrestlers' they called them- 
selves — but they didn't have spirit enough to 
wrestle with a June bug. You could walk all 
over them. Anybody could put up a front with 
such people as that. If the Russian officials 
heard a little straight American talk occasion- 
ally they would n't get so cocky." 

"I 've no doubt you could give them the 
straight talk, all right," said the manager with 

15 



A EUSSIAN COMEDY OF EREORS 

an amused smile, "but don't do it; keep away 
from them; it'll be safer." 

On the following day Gordon started for 
Washington ; obtained there a passport from the 
State Department; and sailed from New York 
Saturday morning for Liverpool. 

Two weeks later, from the deck of a Wilson 
Line steamer in the Gulf of Finland, the repre- 
sentative of The Fuel Cartridge Company caught 
his first glimpse of St. Petersburg — a huge 
shining dome and a four-hundred-foot lance of 
gold, rising above the dark green forests at the 
mouth of the Neva. When the customs offlcers 
and gendarmes came on board he had his first 
experience of Russian methods. His passport 
was stamped and returned to him without ques- 
tion, and his samples, which he had slipped into 
the legs of trousers at the bottom of his trunk, 
were not discovered; but the gendarmes took 
away from him a dozen or more personal and 
business letters; three or four English and 
American magazines; and a single book — 
Dixon's "Free Russia" — which he had bought in 
London. The officers explained their seizure of 
these things by saying that they had no time then 
to give them careful examination; but they as- 
sured the owner politely that he could recover 

16 



A KUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

his property by calling for it in person at the 
central police offlce. 

If Gordon's correspondence had not been 
seized, he might not have thought it worth while 
to reclaim the book and magazines; but among 
his letters were three from his best girl, which 
he had carelessly left in his suit-case when he 
changed his cap and sea-going reefer for "shore 
clothes." The idea of leaving those letters to 
be read, reread and commented upon by a 
lot of Russian police clerks was intolerable. 
The very thought of it exasperated him, and 
when, accompanied by a courier interpreter, he 
left the Hotel d'Angleterre for the police station, 
he was in a very irritable state of mind. The 
reception given him when he entered what 
seemed to be the main room of the station did not 
tend to restore his equanimity. Nobody, at first, 
paid any attention to him; but when he ap- 
proached a large desk, over which hung a colored 
lithograph, or oil painting, of the Emperor, the 
uniformed official who was sitting thereat looked 
him over with a scowl and said sternly, "Take off 
your overcoat!" 

The courier whispered to Gordon in English, 
"It 's the custom, you know ; I forgot to tell you ; 
there's an icon (a picture of the Virgin and 

17 



A EUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

Child) and a portrait of His Majesty in the room, 
and it isn't thought respectful to wear over- 
coats." 

Gordon controlled himself with an effort, took 
off his overcoat, and threw it over one arm. 

^'Go out in the entry with your overcoat !" said 
the unappeased official savagely. "This is no 
place for overcoats." 

The courier softened the command in transla- 
tion and said in a frightened whisper, "I '11 take 
out the coat"; but Gordon had understood the 
official's tone, if not his words, and he became 
forthwith a slumbering volcano of suppressed 
wrath. 

When the courier returned, after depositing 
the offending garment in the entry, the official 
inquired, with a slight relaxation of severity, 
"Shto vam oogodno?" [What is it you wish?] 

"I want the books and letters that the gen- 
darmes took away from me on the steamer yes- 
terday," replied Gordon, with rising temper. 

"What is your name?" 

"Alexander Gordon." 

The official turned to a clerk and said, "Find 
his things." 

In a moment they were brought. The letters 

18 



A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

were intact; but ^^Free Russia'^ had apparently 
been mutilated, and several articles, as well as 
all the advertising pages, had been torn out of 
the magazines. When the disjecta membra were 
put into his hands, Gordon looked them over 
with assumed coolness, and then, feeling an im- 
pulse to be as offensive as possible, said to the 
courier, "Tell him that I presume he has had the 
front and back pages of the magazines torn out 
because they contained advertisements of ivory 
soap. From the observations I 've made since 
I came into the Empire, and from what I see here 
I judge that soap is a prohibited article." 

The terrified courier did not dare to put these 
insulting words into Russian, but the English- 
speaking clerk who had censored the magazines 
and who had brought them to the desk translated 
them. 

The face of the official darkened with wrath, 
and turning to the English-speaking clerk he 
said, "Bring me the man's passport, and the 
parts that you cut out of the magazines." 

When they were brought, he looked them 
through and then, addressing the American, said, 
"You bear a Jewish name; are you a Jew?" 

"Do I look like a Jew?" replied Gordon hotly. 

19 



A KUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

^^Of course I 'm not a Jew ! A Jew is just as 
good, though, as any other man, and I 'd far 
rather be a Jew than a Russian policeman." 

"There are plenty of Jews in your country," 
said the official, "and if I were sure that you are 
one, I 'd send you to the frontier with a criminal 
gang by etape. Did you know that one of your 
magazines contained a poem entitled ^Tyranni- 
cide'?" 

"I did n't know it," replied Gordon, "but it 's 
likely enough. What of it?" 

"It 's a direct incitement to Czar-murder, and 
the possession of such literature in Russia is a 
penal offense. You 've seen fit to insult one of 
His Majesty's officers in the performance of his 
duty, and I '11 show you that you can't do it with 
impunity. Take him to the lock-up," he ordered, 
turning to two policemen who were standing 
near. 

Gordon, by this time, was in a towering pas- 
sion. He felt an almost irresistible impulse to 
start what an American collegian would call a 
"rough-house" by assaulting personally the red- 
faced official who dared to send a free American 
citizen to the lock-up ; but he had not wholly lost 
his reason, and choking down his wrath, he al- 
lowed himself to be escorted by the two officers 

20 



A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

to a temporary-detention cell in another part of 
the building. There he spent the rest of the day 
and the night. 

When, on the following morning, he was set at 
liberty, he returned to the Hotel d' Angleterre ; 
fortified and cheered himself with a good break- 
fast and a cigar ; and then, feeling somewhat en- 
couraged, put a fuel cartridge and two or three 
descriptive circulars in his pocket, and went to 
see some Russian hardware dealers whom he 
hoped to interest in his invention. On his way 
down the Nevski, he had occasion to use his 
handkerchief, and in taking it from his pocket, he 
accidentally pulled out also his business circu- 
lars, which dropped unnoticed to the sidewalk. 
If these circulars had contained only the English 
descriptive text, they probably would not have 
attracted attention; but they were embellished, 
unfortunately, with a picture of the fuel car- 
tridge in operation ; and the flames issuing from 
the cylinder inevitably suggested to any Russian 
mind, an exploding bomb. Inasmuch as bombs 
were then becoming the favorite weapons of the 
nihilists, the peasant who happened to pick up 
the circulars thought it his duty to hand them to 
the nearest policeman. 

When, a little later, Gordon returned to his 

21 



A EUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERROKS 

hotel, the proprietor, who was a German, met 
him at the outer door and said in an excited 
whisper, ^^The police are in your room." 

He apparently expected his guest to rush for a 
droshky and make his escape; but Gordon, 
conscious of innocence, said merely, "The police 
be d — d!'' and walked quietly upstairs to his 
apartment. But he little expected to see what 
he did see when he opened his door. There were 
four police officers in the room, all armed with 
sabers and revolvers. His trunk had been forced 
open, and its contents had been taken out and 
strewn in wild confusion over the floor. The 
single fuel cartridge that he had left in one of his 
trouser-legs had been found, and had been pru- 
dently placed in a wash-basinful of water. Be- 
fore he had time to realize what it all meant, two 
of the officers sprang upon him and seized him 
by the wrists, while the other two drew their 
revolvers, as if in expectation of desperate resist- 
ance. A rapid search of his person brought to 
light a second fuel cartridge, which was placed in 
the basinful of water beside the first. 

"You are under arrest," said the officer who 
seemed to be in command. "You '11 find it safer 
not to resist." 

22 



A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

But Gordon was so dazed that lie did not even 
think of resistance. 

"Take him to the Litovski Zamok/' said the 
same officer. "Put him in a solitary-confinement 
cell and see that he does n't communicate with 
anybody." 

In two or three minutes Gordon found himself 
in a closed carriage, with a police officer on each 
side of him, and in less than a quarter of an hour, 
he was incarcerated in a seven-by-nine cell in the 
Litovski Zamok, where, after his money, letter of 
credit, and personal papers had been taken away 
from him, he was finally left alone. In the three 
days of solitary confinement that followed, he 
had ample time to put facts together, draw infer- 
ences, and reflect upon the vicissitudes of the fuel 
cartridge business. 

The Russian authorities, meanwhile, investi- 
gated the bombs. The pyrotechnic expert to 
whom they were submitted allowed them to soak 
forty-eight hours in a pan of water. He then 
ventured to dissect them, and found, to his sur- 
prise, that they contained nothing but asbestos, 
and that it would have been impossible either to 
explode them or burn them. The chief of police, 
in the meantime, had had a translation made of 

23 



A KUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

the descriptive circular, and as soon as he re- 
ceived a report from the expert, stating that the 
cylinders were, and always had been, harmless, 
he ordered the prisoner's release. 

When Gordon returned to the Hotel d'Angle- 
terre, the proprietor welcomed him with joy. "I 
knew it would be all right," said the sympathetic 
German. "The Russian police are stupid. 
They imagine they see an elephant when it 's only 
a mouse.'' 

"I'm no mouse," said Gordon gloomily, "but 
I think I 've had enough of this country. A man 
never knows over night what 's going to happen 
to him. I 'm going back to London to-mormw." 

But how can any mortal know what is in the 
lap of the gods? While the representative of the 
Fuel Cartridge Company was packing his trunk 
that evening, a compositor in the office of the 
Golos was setting up the advertisement of the 
lost passport, and just as Gordon was falling 
asleep, the chief of police was issuing an order 
for a round-up of Jews. 

Gordon rose late on the following morning and 
had tea and rolls in his apartment. He then 
went downstairs, and had just lighted a cigar 
and taken up a copy of the London Times in the 
reading room, when the proprietor came to him 

24 



A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

with a policeman and said, "You're wanted 
again." 

"What's the matter now?" demanded the in- 
censed American. "Can't I keep out of jail one 
whole day?" 

"I don't know," replied the landlord. "The 
officer says you are to go with him. Perhaps 
they want to ask you something more about the 
bombs." 

"D — ^n the bombs!" said Gordon fervently. 
"But I don't wonder the people in this country 
use them. If I'm not back before Saturday, 
send my trunk by the Wilson Line steamer to 
Brown, Shipley & Co., London, and cable the 
Fuel Cartridge Company, Indianapolis, U. S. A., 
that I 'm in jail." 

Again the prisoner was taken to the Litovski 
Zamok. This time, however, he was not shut up 
in a solitary-confinement cell, but was conducted 
to a large kamera, twenty or thirty feet square, 
from which, as he approached it, he could hear a 
babel of commingled voices. When the door was 
thrown open, he entered what seemed to be a 
ward in a lunatic asylum. The kamera was 
crowded with men — all apparently Jews — who 
were shouting, gesticulating, protesting, inquir- 
ing, and arguing, in a perfect frenzy of excite- 

25 



A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

ment. As Gordon did not understand a word of 
Russian, he found it impossible to get any ex- 
planation of this prison mass-meeting of jabber- 
ing, gesticulating Jews, or of his own personal 
relation to it. It seemed to him like a wild Old 
Testament nightmare. At last he found among 
the prisoners the treasurer of a Jewish benevo- 
lent society, who spoke English. From him he 
demanded, "What 's the row? Who are all these 
people?'' 

"The police have made a raid on the Gordon 
and Khairanski families," said the young Jew 
excitedly, "and nobody knows why. There are 
five Gordons and six Khairanskis here already.'' 

"Which are you?" inquired Alexander with 
sympathetic interest. 

"I 'm a Gordon," replied the young Jew. 

"Then the Lord have mercy on your soul !" said 
Alexander solemnly. "I 'm a Gordon myself, 
from America, and I 've been in jail three times 
this week. What '11 happen to a Russian Gordon 
is beyond imagination." 

In further conversation, Alexander learned 
that there were present eight or ten Jews of other 
names, who had happened to be in the Gordon 
and Khairanski apartments when the arrests 

26 



A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

were made. They, too, had been gathered in, 
and among them were four or five needy students 
in the university, who had merely called at the 
treasurer's house to receive the quarterly sti- 
pends which were due them from the benevolent 
society's fund. There the police had happened 
to find them, and had taken them into custody as 
"frequenters" and "associates." 

In course of time, the excitement quieted down, 
and early in the afternoon, the chief of police 
began to separate the sheep from the goats by the 
process which he called "sifting." One after 
another, the Jews were interrogated and taken 
away separately for further examination, and the 
kamera gradually emptied. When Alexander 
Gordon's turn came, near the close of the second 
day, he was taken to the prison office. There he 
found the English-speaking clerk from the cen- 
tral police station, who said to him, "His Excel- 
lency directs me to inform you that your passport 
and a permit to leave the Empire have been sent 
to your hotel. He suggests that you make imme- 
diate use of them both." 

Gordon took the night express for Berlin that 
evening, and as soon as he reached London, he 
sent to his employers the following cable : 

27 



A KUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 

Fuel Cartridge Co., 
Indianapolis. 
They jail a man in Russia if he mentions soap, if 
he sells fuel cartridges, or if his name is Gordon. Am 
coming home. 

Alexander Gordon. 



28 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 



II 

A SINGING BIKD OF PREY ^ 

^^T T'OU ask how I happened to go to Siberia to 
j[ study music/' said my Russian friend Hart- 
veld, as we sat smoking in the open-air restaurant 
of Brunn's Park, Helsingfors. "I might reply 
by asking you how you happened to go there to 
study penal servitude. I presume the induce- 
ment in both cases was the same. You thought 
you would find, among the political exiles in 
Siberia, characters, conditions and stories of 
personal adventure that would be novel and in- 
teresting, and that you could use as literary 
material. 

^^I expected to find there, among the com- 
mon criminals, the runaway convicts, and 
the ^Ivan Dontremembers' ^ songs and melodies 

1 For the essential facts of this story I am indebted to the 
Russkoe Bogatstvo, and to the well known collector of Rus- 
sian folk-songs, V. N. Hartveld, of St. Petersburg.— G. K. 

2 When a hard-labor convict has escaped from prison in 
one part of Siberia, and has been rearrested in another part, 
where he is not known, he tries to conceal his identity and 

31 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

that would be original and striking, and that 
would be the expression, in musical form, of 
strong emotion and very unusual experience. 
The field of folk-music in European Russia had 
been carefully and thoroughly worked. Large 
collections of peasant songs had been made, and 
we knew all the varied forms in which the 
thoughts and feelings of the common people find 
musical and poetical expression ; but nobody had 
ever collected the songs of penal servitude. I 
happened to hear two of them in Moscow, some 
years ago, and was so strongly impressed by the 
originality of the melodies to which the words 
had been set that I conceived the idea of going to 
Siberia and making a study of convict music — 
the music of the exile parties, the forwarding 
prisons, and the mines. I had some reputation 
in Russia as a collector of folk-songs, and my 
relations with the higher bureaucratic officials in 
St. Petersburg happened to be such that my ap- 
plication for permission to visit the prisons and 
the penal settlements was promptly and courte- 
ously granted. Armed with letters from the 
Prison and Exile Department, I left St. Peters- 
prevent an examination of his record by calling himself 
"Ivan Dontremember." There are dozens of these "Ivans" 
in every large Siberian prison. — G. K. 

32 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

burg in June, 1908, and spent the whole summer 
in Siberia going as far east as the mines of 
Nerchinsk, on the headwaters of the Amur, and 
visiting all the more important prisons and penal 
settlements from the Urals to the Pacific." 

"Did you succeed in getting the convicts to 
sing for you?" I inquired. 

"Yes," he replied, "but with great difflculty. 
Singing in the prisons had always been strictly 
forbidden ; and it was hard to make the convicts 
believe that a request so extraordinary and un- 
precedented as a request for songs was not an 
official trap of some kind that would get them 
into trouble. When the warden of the prison 
went with me into one of the kameras ^ and said 
to the prisoners, Well, boys, how about some 
music for this gentleman? He wants to hear you 
sing'; there was dead silence. The convicts — 
most of them burglars, highwaymen, or mur- 
derers — stared at me with surprise, curiosity and 
suspicion, but did not open their mouths. When 
the warden pressed them for a reply, and assured 

3 A "kamera," in a Russian prison, is a large room in 
which are confined a dozen or more prisoners. A "cell" is 
usually a much smaller apartment, intended for a single 
occupant. A "kartser," or dungeon, is a still smaller pun- 
ishment-cell, which has no chair, bed, or bedding, and which, 
as a rule, is perfectly dark. — G. K. 

33 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

them that I was not an official, but merely a col- 
lector of folk-songs, who would not get them into 
any trouble, one of them, speaking for the others, 
would say respectfully, ^We don't know any 
songSj Your High Nobility; music is not one of 
our sins.' Then I would have to explain who I 
was and what my objects were, and the warden 
would have to argue and persuade for half an 
hour, before the prisoners could be brought to 
admit that they knew any songs, or had ever sung 
any. Siberian convicts — naturally enough per- 
haps — regard with great suspicion official re- 
quests and proposals that seem to them 
extraordinary or inexplicable. Why should 
they be strictly forbidden to sing for their own 
amusement, and then suddenly be asked to sing 
for the satisfaction of a chinovniJc [official] from 
St. Petersburg? It might be some new kind of 
scheme to entrap them into a compromising ad- 
mission; and the safest thing to do was to dis- 
claim knowledge of music altogether. But they 
generally yielded at last, when they became con- 
vinced that I was really a musician, not a 
chinovnihy and that singing for me would not 
lead to any unpleasant consequences. And won- 
derful songs and melodies I got out of some of 

34 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

them ! Did you ever happen to hear, in eastern 
Siberia, the ^Leg-fetter March'?'' 

<^No/' I replied, ''I think not. I heard in the 
trans-Baikal a sort of wailing chant, which the 
convicts sang as they marched through the peas-^ 
ant villages on their way to the mines ; but it had 
no marked time and was a begging-song, rather 
than a march." 

"That's not it," said Hartveld. "The *Leg- 
f etter March' has no words ; it is a melody, not a 
song. On the road, the convicts hum it, with 
closed lips, and in the prisons they mark the time 
with a rhythmical clashing of leg-fetter chains, 
and add a weird buzzing accompaniment made 
by blowing on paper-wrapped combs. If you 
have never heard it, I can't possibly give you an 
idea of it without instruments and a chorus. 
You may think from my description, that it is a 
childish performance, more likely to excite laugh- 
ter and ridicule than serious emotion; but, in 
reality, it is an extraordinary and tragic thing, 
and fairly makes the ants crawl up and down 
one's back. After my return from Siberia, I got 
together a chorus and a small orchestra and gave 
a series of concerts, in which I introduced songs 
of penal servitude and the ^Leg-fetter March'; 

35 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

but the effect of the march on the audiences was 
such that the Government finally prohibited it. 
Thousands of Russian concert-goers now know 
the air, but to play it on an instrument in public, 
or even to hum it, is a misdemeanor. 

"From a musician's point of view, the melodies 
of many of the convict songs have great novelty 
and originality, due in part, perhaps, to the fact 
that they have been borrowed from, or influenced 
by, the aboriginal music of the Asiatic natives. 
Hundreds of convicts make their escape, every 
year, from the Siberian prisons or mines, and 
wander, for months, over the tundras, or through 
the taiga [primeval Siberian forests], seeking 
shelter and food, now and then, in the tents and 
yourtes of the Samoyedes, the Buriats, or the 
Yakuts. When they are finally recaptured, they 
bring back to the prisons, and set to Russian 
words, the airs that they have learned from the 
natives with whom they have been living. Mel- 
odies that have originated in this way are almost 
as hard to sing or play as they are to transcribe, 
on account of their unfamiliar scale-intervals 
and abrupt changes of mode or key ; but the con- 
victs catch them with great quickness of ear, and 
reproduce them with surprising accuracy and 
skill. In the Tobolsk prison, for example, they 

36 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

have a song, consisting of solo and chorus, in 
which the key — B flat major — is changed to a 
different one in every phrase ; and that 's a trick 
that the most experienced opera singer would 
have difficulty in performing without the aid of 
instruments." 

"How do they get such skill," I inquired, "if 
they are not allowed to sing in their kameras and 
have no practice?" 

"Most Russian peasants are born with a musi- 
cal ear," replied Hartveld, "and they have i)lenty 
of practice before they get into prison. Besides 
that, they do sing more or less, in spite of pro- 
hibition. The turnkeys are often fond of music, 
and they let the prisoners sing, now and then, in 
a subdued tone, when the higher prison authori- 
ties are out of the way. Then, too, the best 
voices have practice in the choirs of the prison 
churches. But it is impossible to account for 
the extraordinary skill that some of them show, 
not only in vocal music but in instrumental. 
You probably could n't find a balalaika, a violin, 
or a stringed instrument of any kind, if you 
should search the Siberian prisons from Tobolsk 
to Nerchinsk; and yet, in one of the loneliest 
ostrogs of the trans-Baikal, I ran across a bala- 
laika-player — a common convict and a wholly un- 

37 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

educated peasant — whose technique was simply 
marvelous. Did you happen to visit, in the 
course of your investigation, the east-Siberian 
mine of Gorni Zerentui?" 

"Yes/' I replied, "I spent a day or two there in 
the winter of 1885-6. It impressed me as the 
dreariest, most God-forsaken place in all the 
trans-Baikal. The prison, too, if I remember 
rightly, was one of the worst that I saw." 

"They 've put up a new building since your 
time," said Hartveld, "and, as Siberian prisons 
go, it is n't so bad ; but the place, as you say, is 
dreary and lonely. You feel as if you were ten 
thousand miles away from the world of living 
men. But it was there that I found my bala- 
laika-player. The warden and I had been 
through nearly all the rooms in the large build- 
ing, and had not been able to find a single 
prisoner who would sing, or who was willing to 
admit that he ever had sung. Finally, we went 
to the kamera of the ^bezsrochni' — the life-term 
convicts — where we found eighteen men, all mur- 
derers, and most of them men who had made 
homicide a profession, or who, at least, had killed 
more than once. At the stem command of the 
guard, ^Smeerno! Po mestam!' [Silence! Take 
your places !] they all sprang to their feet, with a 

38 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

great clashing of chains; formed a semicircular 
line in front of the sleeping-platforms ; and with 
hands and arms held rigidly at their sides, stood 
^at attention.' 

"^How do you do, boys?' said the warden 
affably. 

" ^We wish you health, Your High Nobility !' 
shouted the prisoners hoarsely in unison, using 
the prescribed form of response to an official 
greeting. 

" ^What do you say, boys, to singing a few 
songs for this gentleman? He has come from St. 
Petersburg, with the permission of the higher 
authorities, to study your music ; and he will be 
very much obliged if you '11 sing for him. How 
about it?' 

^^Dead silence. 

" ^Don't be suspicious, boys, just because we 
ask you to do something that is usually forbid- 
den. It 's all right ; nothing will happen to you. 
This gentleman is not a chinovnik, or a revizor 
[investigating officer] ; he 's a musician ; and he 
wants to hear your songs, and write the tunes 
down on paper, so that he can compare them with 
the songs and tunes of the prostoi narod [com- 
mon people] in Russia. He has already col- 
lected hundreds of songs, and he knows that you 

39 



A SINGING BIKD OF PKEY 

have some good ones. Don't be obstinate — sing 
for Mm/ 

^^Dead silence. The prisoners eyed us sullenly 
and suspiciously from under their brows, but did 
not open their lips. 

" ^Semyonof !' said the warden, addressing one 
of them directly. ^You must know who the 
singers are in this kamera — tell us. We are not 
trying to trap anybody, or get anybody into 
trouble.' 

" We are birds of prey, Your High Nobility,' 
replied Semyonof. 'Even when we are out of 
the cage we don't sing — we tear meat.' 

" 'It 's of no use,' said the warden, turning to 
me, 'they won't sing — at least until they have 
talked it over among themselves. We '11 try 
again later.' 

"We were about to leave the kamera when an 
old convict, with snow-white hair and beard, and 
the face of a patriarch, halted us by saying, 
'There 's Klochkof, Your High Nobility. He 
was bragging, only a little while ago, that he 
could sing, and he even used to fool with a bala- 
laika.' 

"As we afterward learned, the convict thus 
pointed out was not a favorite among his com- 

40 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

rades, and they were quite ready to get Mm into 
trouble by betraying bim. 

"'Good for Klocbkof!' cried the warden. 
^He 's a better man than any of you. Step out, 
Kloehkof !' 

"The convict thus summoned came forward 
slowly, rolling a little from side to side as he 
lifted the heavy chains of his leg-fetters. At a 
distance of six or eight feet, he stopped, raised 
his eyes from the floor, and looked steadily at the 
warden, without the least sign of fear or em- 
barrassment. He was still a young man — thirty- 
five years of age, perhaps — with a compact, ath- 
letic figure, a strong but expressionless face, 
dark, opaque eyes, and chestnut-brown hair, long 
on one side and cut short on the other from the 
forehead to the nape of the neck. 

" 'The boys say you can sing, Klochkof,' said 
the warden. 'Is that so?' 

" 'They 're only making game of me, Your High 
Nobility,' replied the convict. 'Long ago, when 
I worked in a factory, I used to pay some atten- 
tion to such things, but now — ' 

" 'Well, don't you do it now?' 

"A sudden flash of animation gave unwonted 
fire to the convict's dull eyes. 

41 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

"^What's the use of denying it?' he replied. 
^I know a few songs.' 

^^His comrades exchanged glances signifi- 
cantly, as if to say : ^Now he 's in for it.' 

" ^When will you sing for me, Klochkof ?' I 
asked. 

^^ 'I can't sing without an accompaniment, 
Your Honor. If I had a balalaika now, — per- 
haps — ' 

" ^All right ! I '11 get a balalaika for you. 
When will you sing?' 

" ^Whenever Your Honor pleases.' 

" ^He can come to the office when we 're ready,' 
said the warden. ^Let me know when you 've 
looked up a balalaika, and I '11 send for him 
again.' 

" ^Who is this Klochkof?' I asked, after we had 
left the kamera. ^What 's his history ?' 

" ^The Devil only knows !' said the warden. 'I 
can tell you more or less about the character of 
every other man in the prison ; but I 've never 
been able to make this one out. He is a quiet, 
orderly convict; obeys the rules, and gives us no 
trouble ; but he seldom speaks, even to his fellow 
prisoners, and when a man is silent all the time 
it must mean something — it is n't natural. Of 
course there are many convicts who are not talk- 

A2 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

ative; but Klochkof is a regular champion of 
silence. So far as speech is concerned he might 
be a Trappist monk. I don't know what it 
means, but there 's something mysterious in it.' 

" ^How did he become a convict?' I inquired. 

" ^That involves another mystery/ replied the 
warden. ^We know what his crime was, but 
that 's all we do know. In a peasant village of 
the province of Yaroslav, he rushed into a 
church where a wedding was taking place ; killed 
the bridegroom and the bride, with two blows of 
a short -handled ax ; and then quietly gave himself 
up. He refused to explain his act ; attempted no 
justification of himself when he was tried; and 
made no plea for mercy when he was sentenced to 
penal servitude for life. He was silent then, and 
he has been silent ever since. Take him all in 
all, he 's a problematic character. I never before 
heard him say as much as he has said to-day.' 

"On the following afternoon, I succeeded in 
finding an old, much-used balalaika, in the house 
of a ticket-of-leave convict of the Free Com- 
mand * and the warden sent an armed guard to 

4 Convicts whose behavior in prison has been satisfactory- 
are released on a limited ticket of leave, before the expira- 
tion of their penal terms, and are allowed to live in houses 
of their own, just outside of the prison stockade. They are 
known as the "Free Command." — G. K. 

43 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

bring Klochkof to the office. In five minutes he 
appeared, walking clumsily and awkwardly in 
heavy fetters whose looped-up chain clashed 
between his legs at every step. At sight of the 
balalaika in my hands he straightened himself a 
little, and a faint flush of color came into his 
face. 

" ^Here 's your balalaika, Klochkof/ I said. 
We succeeded in finding one.' 

" ^Will Your Honor please let me take it?' he 
asked. 

" ^Certainly ! Here !' and stepping forw^ard I 
put it into his hands. He took it carefully, 
pressed it against his body, and stroked it gently, 
as if he were caressing a pet animal. 

" ^Well !' I said expectantly. ^Are you going 
to sing for us now?' 

" ^Why should n't I sing?' he replied, Vhen I 
have a balalaika ; but it 's years since I held one 
in my hands. Give me a little time for practice 
— three days. Your Honor — in three days I '11 
learn to play it again, and then I '11 sing for you.' 

^^I consulted the warden in a whisper and he 
agreed to let Klochkof have the instrument for 
three days in his kamera. Then, turning to the 
prisoner, he said : ^All right, Klochkof ! We '11 
give you time for practice. Limber up your 

44 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

fingers and show us what you can do. In three 
days we '11 send for you again.' 

^^ ^Grant me one more favor, Your High Nobil- 
ity !' said the prisoner imploringly. ^I 'm afraid 
that if I play in the kamera, the boys will laugh 
at me and make fun of me. They may even do 
something to hurt the balalaika — break the 
strings, perhaps, or smash it altogether. Please 
put me into solitary confinement, Your High No- 
bility ! Then I can practise in peace.' 

" ^I can't do that,' said the warden, frowning. 
'The solitary confinement cells are all occupied.' 

u ^Perhaps there 's an empty kartser [dungeon] 
where you could put me,' suggested Klochkof 
diffidently. 

" ^Well, you are a crank !' replied the warden 
with a contemptuous laugh. ^You're the first 
prisoner that has ever asked me, as a favor, to 
shut him up in a kartser. Why, you lunatic, you 
don't seem to realize what a kartser is. There 's 
nothing there to sit on, and not a glimmer of 
light. You won't find it much fun to stand up, 
or sit on a stone floor, for three days, in pitchy 
darkness, and all alone.' 

"^It's easier to play standing up,' replied 
Klochkof, ^and as for loneliness — there '11 be two 
of us ; the balalaika and I.' 

45 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

" ^Have it your own way/ said the warden. ^If 
you want to play blindman's-buff with a bala- 
laika in a Jcartser^ I 've no objection. But don't 
whine to be let out, if you get tired of it, because 
I won't let you out. Let's see — to-day is Thurs- 
day. Sunday afternoon you '11 see God's light 
again, but not before.' 

"The warden waved his hand in dismissal ; the 
guard shouted: ^By the left, wheel! March!' 
and with a measured clashing of leg-fetter chains 
Klochkof disappeared. 

"After dinner, on Sunday, I went to the prison, 
with my note-book and pencils, and the warden 
sent for the entombed balalaika-player. He was 
brought to a large empty room, adjoining the 
office, where there was ample air space, and 
where a writing table had been placed for me. 
The prisoner came in looking pale and worn, but 
not at all disheartened or depressed. His hair 
was in disorder; his long gray coat was soiled 
and rumpled ; his eyes were half closed to exclude 
the unfamiliar light; and his person seemed to 
exhale a faint peculiar odor, like that of a damp 
cellar; but with these exceptions he was un- 
changed. I thought I could see the afterglow of 
recent excitement or exaltation in his tired face, 
but his demeanor was quiet and self-possessed. 

46 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

The audience that awaited him consisted of two 
soldiers armed with rifles, two turnkeys with 
revolvers in their belts, the warden of the prison 
and myself. Holding the balalaika to his breast, 
the prisoner bowed to us respectfully and said : 
'Shall I begin?' 

" Whenever you 're ready,' I replied. 

'at happened to be a bright, clear August day, 
and going to one of the windows, where the sun- 
light fell upon him, Klochkof picked out a plain- 
tive melody on the strings of the balalaika and 
began to sing. His voice was a mellow tenor, 
not extraordinary in volume or compass, but 
sweet and sympathetic. At first, he did not 
greatly impress me — he seemed to lack confi- 
dence and spirit — but when, with a wonderfully 
brilliant balalaika accompaniment, he began the 
popular Siberian exile song, 'My Fate,' he 
seemed, suddenly, to become inspired, and sang 
with a sympathetic depth of feeling that was even 
more remarkable than the technical skill with 
which he gave it expression. 

" 'The man is a born musician !' I said to my- 
self. *He could teach phrasing to many of our 
best operatic tenors.' 

"But the singing — wonderful as it seemed to me 
in that place — was surpassed by the extraordi- 

47 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

nary brilliancy of the accompaniment. The 
balalaika is a wretched musical instrument, at 
best, but in Klochkof s hands it became a mando- 
lin played by an Italian master. His technique 
was something maryelous! If Troyanoyski, the 
soloist in Andreyef s orchestra, is the Sarasate of 
the balalaika, Klochkof is its Paganini. Such 
balalaika playing — such playing on an instru- 
ment of any kind — one rarely hears. 

"When the gifted convict finished his last song, 
I grasped his hand, and, in my enthusiasm, 
thanked him almost effusively. 

" ^Please get the warden to let me keep the 
balalaika a little longer,' he whispered to me, 
while I was still holding his hand. ^Persuade 
him to leave it with me a day or two more.' 

"I made the desired request, but the warden 
declared it absolutely inadmissible. ^It is 
against all rules,' he assured me, ^and I might 
have to answer for it to an inspector." 

" ^Bring me the balalaika,' he said to Klochkof. 

"Then there happened something that I still 
remember as astounding, tragic, and almost ter- 
rible. The quiet, submissive, undemonstrative 
convict suddenly became as fierce and menacing 
as a tigress about to be deprived of her young. 
His face lost every trace of color ; his eyes seemed 

48 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

to fill with blood and fire ; and holding the bala- 
laika to his breast with one hand, he threw him- 
self into a fighting attitude, and cried hoarsely 
and fiercely : ^I '11 never give it up ! You can't 
have it ! I '11 kill the first man that tries to get 
it!' 

"I was absolutely paralyzed with amazement. 

" Take the balalaika away from the prisoner,' 
said the warden in a cold, stern voice. 

^The soldiers and turnkeys, with their hands on 
their weapons, sprang toward the defiant convict, 
who stood motionless, with murder in his eyes, 
breathing heavily and clasping the balalaika to 
his breast. Before they reached him, he realized, 
even in his paroxysm of furious passion, that he 
could not successfully resist four armed men. 
Dropping the balalaika, he stood for an instant 
looking at it, with an expression of wild grief and 
misery in his face, and then, throwing himself on 
the floor, burst into a storm of convulsive sobs. 
Never in my life had I seen such agonized weep- 
ing. It was the expression not merely of disap- 
pointed expectation and thwarted impulse, but of 
all the hopeless misery of a wrecked existence. 
The loss of the balalaika brought to him a vivid 
realization of all that he had missed in lif e^ — love, 
freedom, music, happiness, everything — and the 

49 



A SINGING BIKD OF PREY 

agonized consciousness of irretr-ievable disaster 
was deepened and intensified by acute regret and 
unavailing remorse. 

"The sobs and inarticulate cries of the prisoner 
finally became so wild and hysterical that the 
warden sent for the prison surgeon; but it was 
ten minutes before we could get the weeping and 
distraught man quiet. When, at last, he had 
recovered self-command, I thanked him again for 
singing, and told him that I should leave five 
rubles for him at the prison office. 

" ^Your Honor,' he said through his tears, 'I 
don't want money for that. Just let me take the 
balalaika once more — for a minute.' 

"I gave it to him. He stroked it caressingly, 
pressed his lips to it twice, and then surrendered 
it. As the guards were about to take him away, 
he turned again and said : Tlease, Your Honor, 
grant me one favor more. When you get back to 
Russia, you may find yourself, sometime, in the 
province of Yaroslav. If you ever do, please go 
to the village church of Romanof-Borisoglebsk ; 
light a candle before the portrait of the Holy 
Mother of God that hangs on the left side of the 
chancel ; and have a mass said for the repose of 
the soul of — of — Marya Ivanovna !' 

"He spoke the name with a half-strangled sob, 

50 



A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 

and seemed to be on the point of breaking down 
again ; but in a moment he recovered self-control, 
and bowing low to me said: ^Good-by, Your 
Honor; God grant you a safe return to your 
home.' 

"The guard threw open the door ; the prisoner 
went out ; and the clashing of his leg-fetter chain 
grew fainter and fainter as he marched down the 
corridor to the kamera of the hez-sroclini. I 
never saw him again. 

"Who was Marya Ivanovna, and what had 
been the convict's relations with her? Was the 
candle to be lighted, and the mass to be said, for 
the repose of the soul of the bride who had been 
killed with an ax, as she stood before the altar, 
in that village church of Romanof-Borisoglebsk? 

"I never knew." 



51 



EUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'' 



Ill 

EUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'' 

ALTHOUGH the peculiar form of police em- 
buscade known as a "mouse trap" has had 
its fullest development and its widest application 
in Russia, it did not originate in that country, 
nor did it receive there its strikingly appropriate 
appellation. It was imported, a century or more 
ago, from France, and the name that it bears was 
given to it, in 1829, by Alexander Dumas. The 
distinguished French story-teller described it, in 
"Les Trois Mousquetaires," as follows: 

"The invention of the mouse trap does not date 
from our days. As soon as societies, in process 
of formation, created police, the police, in turn, 
invented mouse traps. As our readers may not 
be familiar with the slang of the Rue de Jeru- 
salem, and as it is fifteen years since we applied 
this term, for the first time, to the thing, we may 
be allowed, perhaps, to explain to them what a 
mouse trap is. When, in a house of any kind, an 
individual suspected of crime is arrested, the 

55 



RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS" 

arrest is kept secret ; four or five men are placed 
in ambuscade in the first apartment, the door is 
opened to all who knock, it is then closed after 
them, and they are arrested; so that, at the end 
of two or three days, the police have in their 
power all the persons who are accustomed to visit 
the place. And that is a mouse trap." 

Dumas does not explain that the first arrest is 
made, and the trap set, at a late hour of the night 
— generally between one and three o'clock A. m. 
— so that the "mice" will not become aware of it 
and avoid the dangerous locality. You may call 
upon a "politically untrustworthy" friend in the 
evening ; drink tea with him ; discuss the state of 
the country; and go home at midnight without 
having seen or heard anything to excite suspicion 
or suggest peril; but if you return to the same 
house or apartment early the next morning, you 
are liable to fall into a mouse trap, set by the 
police in the dead hours of the night. The trap, 
moreover, catches and holds every person who 
enters it, regardless of nationality, dress, social 
position, or official rank. Russian revolutionists 
are accustomed to assume all sorts of disguises, 
from the blue frock coat and wrinkled top-boots 
of the gendarmerie to the sword, epaulettes, and 
golden cords of the general staff ; and if the Czar 

56 



RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'' 

himself, in the uniform of the Preobrazhenski 
Guards, should visit, incognito, a house in which 
a trap had been set, he would be arrested 
promptly and sent to the nearest uchastoh, or 
precinct station-house, for identification. No 
discretionary power, of any kind, is given to the 
police officers in charge. The mice caught may 
not look at all like the mice for which the trap 
was set; but even if they appear to be ermine, or 
lizards, or small blind kittens, they must go to 
the uchastoh for examination and judgment. 

Some years ago, Mr. Baddeley, the enterpris- 
ing and well informed St. Petersburg correspond- 
ent of the London Standard, happened to hear, 
one hot July morning, that at a late hour on the 
previous night, the police had made an attempt 
to arrest a number of nihilists who were holding 
a conspirative meeting in an apartment house sit- 
uated near the intersection of the Gorokhovaya 
Street and the Kazanskaya. Resistance had 
been offered by the conspirators; a number of 
pistol shots had been exchanged; and one of the 
police officers, it was said, had been killed. 
Thinking that this revolutionary incident would 
afford interesting material for a letter to the 
Standard, Mr. Baddeley determined to visit the 
apartment where the fighting had occurred, pick 

57 



RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'' 

up such details as could be had, and get accurate 
"local color" for his story. Everybody in the 
neighborhood seemed to be afraid to give him 
information with regard to so dangerous a sub- 
ject as the arrest of nihilists, and as he could not 
ascertain the number of the house in which the 
seditious meeting had been held, he had some 
difflculty in finding his way to the place. A 
street policeman finally showed him the house, 
and told him that the nihilist apartment was in 
the third story. Ascending two flights of rather 
dark stairs, he knocked at the first door that pre- 
sented itself, with the intention of asking for 
further directions. Somewhat to his surprise, 
the door was opened promptly by a police officer. 

"I 'm looking for the apartment where the 
nihilists were arrested last night," said the corre- 
spondent; "is this it?" 

"Yes," replied the police officer. 

"May I come in?" 

"It is not forbidden," said the officer courte- 
ously, "Pazholuitia !" [Enter, please.] 

"Thank you," said Baddeley, and removing 
his hat, he stepped into a rather large, simply 
furnished room, on whose hardwood floor there 
were a number of inexpensive rugs, and against 
whose walls hung a few engravings of scenery in 

58 



EUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'' 

the Caucasus and a portrait of Herzen. This 
reception room, or parlor, opened into two or 
three smaller chambers, in one of which there 
was a bed that did not seem to have been recently 
occupied, and in another a circular, chair-sur- 
rounded table, a polished brass samovar, half a 
dozen tea glasses in filigree holders of plated sil- 
ver, and two or three ash-receivers filled with 
unbumed ends of cigarettes. The furniture 
everywhere was comparatively cheap and plain, 
and with the exception of the portrait of Herzen 
in the front room, there was nothing in the whole 
apartment to distinguish it from a hundred sim- 
ilar suites in that part of the city. The police 
officer went into all the rooms with the corre- 
spondent, and watched attentively the latter's 
movements ; but he refused to be drawn into con- 
versation, and in reply to every question with 
regard to the events of the previous night he 
replied briefly and formally, "Ne magoo znat" 
[I have no means of knowing]. 

After inspecting the apartment, and taking 
mental note of all the facts and details that he 
thought he could work into his description, 
Baddeley thanked the police officer for his 
courtesy and started for the door. The officer, 
however, interposed an arm and said firmly, "Ex- 

59 



EUSSIAN "MOUSE TKAPS" 

cuse me, please, you must remain here. You 
were at liberty to come in, but you cannot go 
out." 

"But I 'm the St. Petersburg correspondent of 
the London standard" explained Baddeley. "I 
merely came in to look at the place for the pur- 
pose of describing it in a letter to my paper." 

"I have no means of knowing who you are," 
replied the officer ; "that does n't concern me. 
My orders are to arrest and detain every person 
who comes here." 

"But that 's absurd !" said Baddeley. "I 'm 
not a nihilist, nor even a Russian. I 'm an 
Englishman, and I came here merely to look 
around." 

"I see that you are not a Russian," said the 
officer imperturbably, "and I presume you can 
convince the proper authorities that you are all 
right ; but I must detain you here until I can send 
you to the uchastok under guard. They '11 find 
out there who you are. An officer has just gone 
to the station-house with another prisoner, and 
as soon as he returns he can take you." 

Baddeley tried to argue the question, and to 
show the officer how preposterous it was to arrest 
a newspaper man, and a foreigner, who merely 
wished to get local color for a descriptive letter ; 

60 



KUSSIAN ^^MOUSE TRAPS" 

but the officer was inexorable, and finding that 
he had fallen into a mouse trap, Baddeley lighted 
a cigarette, seated himself on the low sill of one 
of the open windows, and amused himself by 
watching the passing droshkies, and listening 
to the discordant cries of the fruit peddlers in the 
street below. Presently, he saw his friend Dob- 
son, the St. Petersburg correspondent of the Lon- 
don Times, walking along the Gorokhovaya and 
looking up at the houses, as if he were in search 
of something whose exact location he did not 
know. 

"Hello, Dobson!'' he hailed. 

"Hello !" replied the Times man. 

"Where are you going this hot day ?" 

"I 'm looking for that beastly nihilist apart- 
ment," replied Dobson. "Have you found it?" 

"Yes," shouted Baddeley cheerfully, "it's up 
here." 

"Can I come up?" 

"Certainly! Climb two flights of stairs and 
knock at the first door. It 's a mighty interest- 
ing place. I '11 show you the blood on the wall. 
I 'm going to make two columns out of it." 

Congratulating himself on his good luck in 
coming across Baddeley, and in thus finding out 
where the nihilist apartment was, Dobson has- 

61 



RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS" 

tened upstairs, knocked at the door, and was ad- 
mitted, as his colleague had been, without ques- 
tion. He, too, was a little surprised to find a 
police officer acting as janitor, but as Baddeley 
was still sitting on the window sill, coolly smok- 
ing a cigarette, he assumed, of course, that in- 
spection of the apartment was permitted and 
that everything was all right. The two news- 
paper men then went through the rooms, examin- 
ing the walls for bullet holes and blood, and even 
looking in the teapot on the samovar, to see 
whether the nihilists had finished drinking tea 
before they were arrested. The police officer 
went everywhere with them, and watched atten- 
tively all their movements; but he volunteered 
no information, and in reply to Dobson's ques- 
tions merely repeated the dry official formula, 
^^Ne magoo znat." 

After fully satisfying his curiosity, the Times 
man said to his companion : "Well, I 've seen all 
I want to, let 's go'' ; and leaving the open win- 
dow, where Baddeley had again taken his seat, 
he started for the door. To his great surprise, 
the police officer seized him by the arm and said : 
"Neilza!" [You can't go.] 

"Zachem neilza?" [Why can't I?] demanded 
Dobson. 

62 



BUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'' 

"Because you 're under arrest. I '11 send you 
to the station-house as soon as I can, but for the 
present you must remain here. There '11 be 
another officer here in an hour or so." 

Dobson protested, stormed, and explained 
indignantly that he was the correspondent of the 
London Times and had come to the apartment 
merely for information; but his statements and 
remonstrances had no effect. 

"You can explain everything at the station- 
house," said the officer; "I have no authority to 
release you." 

"Are you under arrest, too, Baddeley?" in- 
quired Dobson. 

"Of course," replied the correspondent of the 
Standard, "You did n't suppose I was sitting in 
a third-story window, on a dirty noisy street, for 
fun, did you? I should have got out of here 
long ago if I could. I was pinched." 

"Why did n't you tell me so when you hailed 
me in the street?" 

"I'm not an information bureau," replied 
Baddeley coolly. "You asked if you could come 
up, and I told you you could. You did n't say 
anything about going down. You wanted to see 
a nihilist apartment, did n't you? Well, you 've 
seen it." 

63 



EUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'' 

"Yes, but I would n't have come up if I had 
known that it was a trap." 

"Of course not," replied his colleague unsym- 
pathetically, "but when you investigate anything 
in this country you 've got to take your chances. 
The only safe way is to send somebody ahead to 
poke the trap with a stick." 

The two correspondents were held in the 
nihilist apartment for an hour or more, and were 
then sent under guard to the precinct station- 
house. There they established their identity by 
summoning one of the secretaries of the British 
embassy, and after receiving a politely worded 
caution, tempered with expressions of official 
sympathy and regret, they were released. 

When I returned to St. Petersburg, from my 
second Siberian expedition, mouse traps gave me 
more anxiety than all other forms of police activ- 
ity taken together. I had brought with me from 
the trans-Baikal and the mines a large number of 
letters from political exiles to their relatives and 
friends, and these letters I had promised sacredly 
to deliver in person. Many of the writers had 
been forced, for years, to confine their corre- 
spondence with their families to postal cards, 
which they were compelled to submit to the 
police for censorship. Practically everything on 

64 



RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'^ 

these cards, except the assurance of continued 
existence, was erased by the official censors 
through whose hands they passed, and the un- 
fortunate exiles, longing for some better and 
freer means of communication, welcomed me, 
with pathetic eagerness, as a man who was going 
back to the civilized world and could take uncen- 
sored letters to the husbands, wives, parents and 
children who were dear to them. It was a penal 
offense to carry such letters, but I could not 
fairly ask exiles and convicts to put themselves 
in my power by giving me all the information I 
wanted, and then deny them a last opportunity, 
perhaps, to communicate freely with their rela- 
tives in European Russia. I knew that such let- 
ters would be a source of constant anxiety — and 
possibly of danger — but I never hesitated to take 
them. Many, if not most, of the persons to 
whom they were addressed were under suspicion 
of political untrustworthiness, and were liable at 
any time to arrest; and in attempting to deliver 
them personally, I ran the risk of falling into a 
mouse trap with the incriminating letters in my 
possession. I took every precaution that my 
own ingenuity and the experience of the exiles 
could suggest, but I never knocked at the door 
of an untrustworthy person without half expect- 

65 



KUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS^' 

ing that it would be opened by a police officer, 
who would politely invite me to come in. Then, 
too, in my search for information with regard to 
political conditions, I had to go to apartments 
where revolutionary work was actually being 
carried on, and these of course were particularly 
dangerous. One such apartment was occupied 
by a very intelligent and charming woman whom 
I shall call Madame Chartoriski. I had visited 
it several times, and had been repeatedly warned 
that I ran great risk in calling there. "We are 
distributing revolutionary literature from here," 
said the lady of the house, "and this is the head- 
quarters of the Exile Red Cross. We may be 
arrested any night, and if you continue to come 
here, you must clearly understand that you are 
in danger of falling into a police ambuscade. 
We cannot warn you when to stay away, because 
we don't know when the blow will fall ; but fall it 
undoubtedly will, sometime. I had a letter from 
an exiled friend, only last week, in which he re- 
proached me for neglect of duty. ^You must be 
idle or timid,' he said, ^because if you weren't 
you would have been in Siberia long ago.' But 
we are not neglecting the work — we have simply 
had good fortune." 

It would have been prudent to stay away from 

66 



BUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'^ 

this place, but Madame Chartoriski, who con- 
cealed and sheltered Stepniak after he assassi- 
nated General Mezentsef, was exceptionally 
well informed with regard to the whole revolu- 
tionary movement, and I could not afford to miss 
the facts and explanations that she was able to 
give me. My wife, however, felt so much anxiety 
for my safety that she finally prevailed upon me 
to let her accompany me, and the first visit that 
we made together to the revolutionary apart- 
ment on the Liteini Prospekt was the last. 
There was no dvornik^ or janitor, at the street 
door, and as we entered it, we encountered 
a bearded man in a soft felt hat and dark civilian 
dress who was coming down the first flight of 
stairs. At sight of us, he stopped, stood for a 
moment in apparent irresolution, and then, turn- 
ing quickly, ran up the uncarpeted steps and dis- 
appeared. As we passed the first landing, an 
unseen hand behind one of the closed doors made 
slowly three spaced knocks as if signaling to 
some one above or below. The knocks, and the 
behavior of the man on the stairs, were mys- 
terious, if not disquieting; but it seemed to me 
quite as safe to go on as to turn, without appar- 
ent reason, and try to leave the building. If 
Madame Chartoriski had been arrested and a 

67 



RUSSIAN ^^MOUSE TRAPS'^ 

mouse trap had been set in her apartment^ we 
probably should not be allowed to escape, and 
precipitate flight would only show that we knew 
we were on dangerous ground. The door of the 
revolutionary apartment was at the head of the 
second flight of stairs. On all my previous 
visits, I had found it not only closed, but locked, 
and it was never opened until Madame Charto- 
riski and her associates had ascertained with cer- 
tainty who was outside. On this particular day 
it was ajar, and that fact alone was sufiicient to 
show that something had happened. We turned 
quickly and were just in the act of descending 
the stairs when a man in civilian dress threw the 
door wide open and demanded: "Shto vam 
oogodno?'' [What do you want?] In the exist- 
ing circumstances we did not want anything, but 
remembering that I had seen a physician^s door 
plate on the flrst floor, I muttered something 
about looking for a doctor and continued to de- 
scend. The man came to the head of the stairs 
and watched us until we turned at the first land- 
ing, but made no attempt to detain us. Who he 
was, and what significance the signal knocks 
behind the closed door had, we never knew. All 
that we were able to learn was that Madame 
Chartoriski had found it extremely dangerous to 

68 



EUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS" 

remain longer in the place where I first met her, 
and had removed to a remote part of the city, on 
the Finland side. What eventually became of 
her I do not know. Perhaps she eluded success- 
fully the vigilance of the police — perhaps she 
moved, finally, to Siberia, where, according to 
her exiled correspondent, she had "long been 
due." 

In every large Russian city, the police keep 
an alphabetical list of all persons who are be- 
lieved to be in sympathy with the revolutionary 
movement, or who, for one reason or another, are 
regarded as "politically untrustworthy." Such 
persons are liable to be arrested on suspicion at 
any time, and are almost sure to be taken into 
custody after the assassination of a high official, 
when there is no clue to the assassin, and when 
the police hope to get a clue by a drag-net system 
of arrest and investigation. At such times, a 
hundred arrests or more are often made in a 
single night, and in the houses or apartments of 
perhaps half the prisoners mouse traps are set to 
catch all comers. The police in charge of the 
traps are strictly enjoined to send to the nearest 
precinct station-house every person caught, no 
matter what plausible account he may give of 
himself, and no matter what he may look like. 

69 



EUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS" 

Revolutionists and terrorists often wear uni- 
forms, and a man who declares that he is a 
colonel of gendarmes, or a general of division, 
may really be a dangerous conspirator in dis- 
guise. The instructions thus given to the trap- 
tenders are always implicitly obeyed, and they 
sometimes bring about results of an extraordi- 
nary and wholly unforeseen character. 

On a certain night in March, the police, in one 
of their raids on the politically untrustworthy 
class, arrested in St. Petersburg a physician 
named Dr. Kadyan. A mouse trap was set in his 
house about two o'clock in the morning, and his 
family, of course, was prevented from communi- 
cating in any way with the outside world. His 
sister. Miss Kadyan, happened to be one of the 
principal teachers in a well known school for 
young women, patronized, and in part supported, 
by the Grand Duchess Ekaterina Mikhaelovna. 
On the 14:th of March — the day that followed the 
arrest and the setting of the mouse trap — the 
school held its annual exhibition. The distin- 
guished patroness herself was not present; but 
the relatives and friends of the pupils had as- 
sembled in large numbers, and on the stage of 
the exhibition hall, under draped flags and a por- 
trait of the Czar, sat Actual State Councilor 

70 



EUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS" 

Dmitrief, Government Inspector of Schools, who, 
in honor of the occasion, wore his full dress uni- 
form and all his orders. The program an- 
nounced that the exhibition would begin with a 
series of exercises by the class of Miss Irina 
Kadyan; but at ten o'clock — the hour of open- 
ing — Miss Kadyan had not made her appearance. 
After waiting for her ten or fifteen minutes, the 
lady principal of the school sent a pupil to the 
Kadyan house, with instructions to bring the 
teacher back with her, or ascertain the reason for 
her unexplained absence. The pupil of course 
fell into the mouse trap and failed to return. 
The audience waited, whispered, and watched the 
door; the Inspector of Schools fidgeted, twisted 
his watch chain, and gazed at the ceiling ; and the 
lady principal, after explaining to His Excel- 
lency that Miss Kadyan must be seriously ill, sent 
a second pupil, post haste, to find out what had 
happened to the first. The mouse trap snapped 
again, and the second pupil was heard of no 
more. Suspecting, at last, that the police were 
responsible for these mysterious disappearances, 
and feeling sure that she could clear up any pos- 
sible misunderstanding in which her teachers 
and pupils might be involved, the principal had a 
droshky called and proceeded to the scene of 

71 



EUSSIAN "MOUSE TKAPS" 

action herself. But the mouse trap is no re- 
specter of persons, and the lady principal fared 
no better than her messengers. She told the 
police in charge of the trap that she was the 
principal of the Grand Duchess Mikhaelovna's 
school ; that it was the day of their annual exhi- 
bition; that she had left the Goyernment In- 
spector of Schools fretting and fuming on the 
platform ; and that if she were not releas'ed, there 
would be no exercises and the Grand Duchess 
would be greatly incensed. The police merely 
replied that they would send her to the precinct 
station-house as soon as possible, and that she 
could explain everything there. 

The Government Inspector of Schools, left with 
an audience, a corps of teachers, and a school 
exhibition on his hands, grew more and more 
impatient and exasperated, and finally an- 
nounced to the wondering and half-frightened 
assembly that there was apparently some idiotic 
misunderstanding, and that if they would be 
good enough to wait a few moments, he would 
go personally to the Kadyan house and clear it 
up. In his own mind he was satisfied that noth- 
ing short of police interference could have pre- 
vented the return of the lady principal, and he 
determined to show the guardians of law and 

72 



EUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS" 

order that to break up an exhibition in the school 
of a Grand Duchess, and to put in a humiliating 
position an Actual State Councilor and a Gov- 
ernment Inspector of Schools who was faithfully 
discharging his duty was a very serious matter. 
He called his droshky, drove hastily to the Kad- 
yan house, burst in at the front door without 
knocking, and was arrested so promptly that it 
took his breath away. 

"Why you !'' he shouted furi- 
ously to the sergeant of police, as soon as he 
could recover himself, ^Do you know who I am? 
I'm Actual State Councilor Dmitrief, Govern- 
ment Inspector of Schools and representative of 
Her Highness the Grand Duchess Ekaterina 
Mikhaelovna. How dare you put me under 
arrest ! I '11 report your impertinence to His 
Majesty himself, and we '11 see whether you have 
authority to lay hands on an Actual State Coun- 
cilor and break up an exhibition in the school of 
a Grand Duchess. The stripes shall be torn from 
your sleeve and you shall be thrown out into the 
street !" 

The police officer trembled and turned pale at 
this fierce attack, but he had been repeatedly 
warned not to judge from appearances, and this, 
after all, might be a terrorist. They were some- 

73 



RUSSIAN "MOUSE TEAPS" 

times equally impressive and furious. One of 
them, in the disguise of a gendarme officer, and 
with forged papers, had almost succeeded in get- 
ting the governor of Yakutsk to turn over to him 
the notorious political criminal Chernishevski. 

"I 'm sorry, Your Excellency," he finally re- 
plied respectfully, "but I must obey my orders. 
I have n't the honor to know Your Excellency by 
sight, but even if I recognized you, I should be 
compelled to detain you. I will have Your Ex- 
cellency escorted to the uchastok at once, and of 
course you will be immediately released." 

The Inspector of Schools, still storming and 
threatening, went out, got into his droshky, and 
proceeded under guard to the station-house. 

The audience in the exhibition hall, mean- 
while, hardly knew what to do. That anything 
could have happened to the lady principal and 
the Government Inspector of Schools was almost 
inconceivable, and yet^ — they did not return. At 
the suggestion of one of the older teachers, a mes- 
senger was finally sent to the palace of the Grand 
Duchess Ekaterina Mikhaelovna to inform her 
that, within an hour, two pupils, the lady princi- 
pal, and the Government Inspector of Schools, 
had disappeared in the house of Dr. Kadyan, and 
to ask her whether something could not be done 

74 



RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'^ 

to clear up the mystery. The Grand Duchess 
immediately sent one of her couriers to the house 
to find out what had happened. The door 
opened to the courier's knock, and the mouse trap 
snapped on the fifth victim. By this time, how- 
ever, the sergeant of police had become convinced 
that the callers from the school and palace of the 
Grand Duchess Ekaterina Mikhaelovna were not 
disguised revolutionists, and although, in detain- 
ing them, he had adhered faithfully to his in- 
structions, he thought it prudent to go himself 
with the last of them to the uchastoh and make 
such explanations as might be needed. In due 
course of time, all of the prisoners except Miss 
Kadyan were released, with profound apologies ; 
but, meanwhile, the audience in the school hall 
had dispersed, and the exhibition had been in- 
definitely postponed.^ 

In Russia, mouse traps of the pattern de- 
scribed by Dumas were not, as a rule, baited. 
They were merely set in the runways that polit- 
ical "mice" frequented, or in the holes to which 
they were accustomed to go. If the mice fell 
into them, it was because they were unsuspecting 

1 The details of this story were given to me by a promi- 
nent member — at one time president — of the Free Economic 
Society, of St. Petersburg, the oldest scientific organization 
in Russia. — G. K. 

75 



EUSSIAN "MOUSE TKAPS" 

or incautious, not because they were attracted by- 
bait. There were, however, traps of another 
type, in which a lure was used, and these traps 
frequently caught cats, as well as mice. When 
General Alexander Zurofl was gradonachalniky 
or prefect, of St. Petersburg, he was greatly 
troubled by his inability to discover the locations 
of two secret revolutionary printing offices, 
which were turning out large quantities of liter- 
ature of an extremely "dangerous tendency.'' 
The police, from time to time, brought to him 
pamphlets, leaflets, and proclamations, which 
they had seized in midnight searches, and which 
bore the imprint either of the party of "The 
People's Will" or of the "Black Division"; but 
they could not tell him where these seditious pub- 
lications originated. They had raided the whole 
politically untrustworthy class, and had searched 
every house in the city where it seemed at all 
probable that a printing press might be con- 
cealed; but their widely thrown drag-nets had 
brought in nothing, and the persons in whose 
possession the seditious literature had been 
found steadfastly refused to say where they ob- 
tained it. 

In these circumstances, the idea occurred to 
General Zuroff that it would be a good plan to 

76 




RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS^^ 

open a decoy printing office of his own. By 
striking off revolutionary leaflets, and getting 
disguised police agents to distribute them with 
caution and secrecy among disaffected operatives 
in factories, he might be able to open communica- 
tion with the real revolutionists who were en- 
gaged in the same work, and find out, through 
them, where the printing presses of The People's 
Will and the Black Division were situated. 

There was great rivalry, at that time, be- 
tween the two independent branches of the Rus- 
sian secret service — the police and the gen- 
darmes. Each tried to surpass the other in the 
discovery and frustration of political con- 
spiracies, and neither made known to the other 
its methods or plans. General Zuroff therefore 
said nothing to General Drenteln, the Chief of 
Gendarmes, with regard to the decoy printing 
office, but quietly opened it, in a house on Little 
Garden Street, and, with the aid of disguised 
agents, began to strike off revolutionary leaflets, 
and to distribute them, with apparent caution 
and secrecy, among factory operatives registered 
in the police books as politically untrustworthy. 

Although General Drenteln, the Chief of Gen- 
darmes, had not been able to locate the printing 
presses of the People's Will and the Black Di- 

77 



EUSSIAN ^^MOUSE TRAPS^' 

vision, he very soon discovered the decoy plant of 
the police in Little Garden Street; and, suppos- 
ing of course that it really was what it purported 
to be, he drew up a revolutionary proclamation 
of the most incendiary character ; gave it to two 
long-haired detectives in soft felt hats, shabby 
coats, and green spectacles; and instructed the 
latter to take it to the "underground' ' printing 
office in Little Garden Street, and, if possible, 
get fifty copies of it struck off, to be used after- 
ward as evidence. The disguised police agents 
in the Little Garden Street trap received the dis- 
guised detectives from the gendarmerie with 
feelings of satisfaction that they could hardly 
conceal. ^^At last," they thought, "we are on the 
right track. We '11 do this work, and when the 
revolutionists in green spectacles come for it, 
we '11 improve our acquaintance with them, se- 
cure their confidence, and gradually get into 
touch with the circle to which they belong. 
Some of their fellow conspirators higher up must 
know where the other printing offices are." 

The disguised police agents promised to have 
the proclamations done by nine o'clock on the 
following evening; and at the appointed hour, 
the disguised gendarmes returned, received the 
copies, and were just in the act of paying for the 

78 



RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS" 

work when, at a given signal, half a dozen of 
their associates, in full uniform and with re- 
volvers in their hands, burst in at the door, seized 
the disguised agents of the police, and rushed 
them off to prison. On the following morning. 
General Drenteln called upon General Zuroff and 
said to him, with an air of modest pride a.nd sat- 
isfaction, "It gives me pleasure to inform Your 
Excellency that I have at last discovered one of 
the revolutionary printing offices that have given 
us both so much trouble. My men raided the 
place last night, found the press, obtained abun- 
dant evidence of criminal activity, and took into 
custody the men in charge.'^ 

General Zuroff, stunned by this unexpected 
announcement and chagrined at the triumph of 
his rival, leaned back in his chair and for a mo- 
ment said nothing. Then, with an air of as- 
sumed indifference, he asked : "Where was it?'^ 

"At No. 16 Little Garden Street,'' replied the 
Chief of Gendarmes. 

General Zuroff revived. He himself had 
failed, but at least General Drenteln had not suc- 
ceeded. 

"I regret to inform Your Excellency," he said 
quietly, "that the printing office at No. 16 Little 
Garden Street was mine. I opened it a week or 

79 



BUSSIAK "MOUSE TEAPS^^ 

two ago; and if this unfortunate misapprehen- 
sion had not occurred, I should probably have 
succeeded in entrapping the men of whom we are 
in search. I shall have to ask Your Excellency 
to release my agents ; they were acting under my 
orders." ^ 

Kussia now has a constitutional parliament, 
and the famous "Third Section/' of which Gen- 
eral Drenteln was chief, has been abolished; but 
mouse traps are still in use, and thousands of 
unwary citizens fall into them every year, and 
are sent to precinct station-houses for examina- 
tion, merely because they call upon friends or 
acquaintances of whose arrest they are unaware. 
Ambuscades of this type are so useful, under the 
present regime, that they are not likely to be 
abandoned until martial law has been abolished 
and arrests are regulated by the civil code. A 
bill to secure inviolability of the person was laid 
before the Kussian Duma in November, 1909, but 
it had been framed by the Government; it did 
not limit in any way the extraordinary powers 
given to the police under the provisions of mar- 
tial law ; and it was so manifestly a sham reform 
that even the conservatives voted against it, and 

2 The facts in this case are from General Zuroff himself. — 
G. K. 

80 



RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'^ 

it was sent back to the committee that reported 
it. In that committee it still lies. Martial law 
is wholly incompatible with personal inviolabil- 
ity, and so long as two-thirds of the Russian 
people are governed by "Rules for Reinforced 
Defense" and "Rules for Extraordinary De- 
fense/^ the administration will continue to make 
use of agents provocateurs and mouse traps. 



81 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 



IV 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPOKT 

WHEN Thomas Bailey Aldrich was editor 
of The Atlantic Monthly in the early 
eighties he was accustomed to spend a part of 
every summer abroad. His annual excursions 
were generally short, and were confined, for the 
most part, to the well-known countries of West- 
ern Europe, but while he was planning one of his 
trips the idea occurred to him that it might per- 
haps be interesting to repeat a flying visit to 
Eussia which he and Mrs. Aldrich had made 
some years before. 

The terroristic campaign of the so-called 
nihilists in 1879-1880 and the assassination of 
Alexander II in 1881 had again attracted the 
attention of the world to the empire of the Czar, 
and it seemed to Mr. Aldrich that he might get in 
St. Petersburg and Moscow, even in a week or 
two, a better understanding than he then had of 
the Russian revolutionary movement, and at the 
same time increase his knowledge of a country 

85 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

and a people that had always made a strong 
appeal to his curiosity and his imagination. 

After a consultation with Mrs. Aldrich, who 
accompanied him on all his transatlantic excur- 
sions, he bought a Murray's "Guide to Russia 
and Finland,'' looked up available routes, sent 
his old passport to the State Department for 
renewal, had it viseed at the Russian Legation, 
and started for St. Petersburg by way of London, 
Hanover, Berlin, and Eydkuhnen. 

The passport on which Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich 
traveled when they made their first visit to Rus- 
sia was issued to "Thomas Bailey Aldrich and 
wife," but in renewing this document the State 
Department, through the error of some clerk or 
copyist, omitted the words "and wife," and made 
it cover the husband only. 

Mr. Aldrich did not notice this omission prior 
to his departure, and even if he had noticed it he 
probably would have thought that a passport for 
himself would be quite sufficient to establish the 
identity of his wife, and that if he were admitted 
to the empire on it, she would be, as a matter of 
course. 

The Russian government, however, was accus- 
tomed to treat husband and wife, for all adminis- 
trative purposes, as separate and distinct person- 

86 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

alities. In their domestic relations they might 
be one; but in their relations to the Foreign 
Office and the Passport Bureau they were two, 
and each must be provided with a "veed," 
or identification paper, setting forth name, na- 
tionality, age, height, color of eyes and hair, 
shape of nose and chin, and such other personal 
peculiarities as would definitely connect the doc- 
ument with the bearer and thus prevent illegal 
substitutions and transfers. In practice, and 
when there were no reasons for suspicion, the 
government often recognized and honored a joint 
passport, but in such cases it required a distinct 
statement that the document covered two persons 
and a certification that such persons were hus- 
band and wife. 

When, therefore, Mr. Aldrich started for St. 
Petersburg with a wife, and a passport for him- 
self only, he was as sure to get into trouble as he 
would have been if he had tried to cross the At- 
lantic with a wife and only one steamer ticket. 
Through a purely fortuitous combination of cir- 
cumstances, however, the trouble did not come at 
the time or place where it might have been ex- 
pected, viz., the Russian frontier. Passports are 
not required in western Europe, and Mr. and 
Mrs. Aldrich reached Eydkuhnen, the last Ger- 

87 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

man railway station, without being required to 
show the single passport that was supposed to 
cover two. When, however, the train crossed the 
little brook that separates Germany from Russia 
and rolled into the Russian frontier station of 
Verzhbolov, or Wirballen, the impending trouble 
was due, and, from every official point of view, 
was absolutely unavoidable. The Queen of Eng- 
land and the Prince Consort could hardly get 
into the empire on a single passport, much less 
the editor of an English or American magazine 
and his wife. 

Passengers bound northward and eastward 
alight from the German train at Verzhbolov and 
are guided by gendarmes into a large bare room 
opening on the railway platform, where a force 
of police officers and customs inspectors collects 
passports and receives baggage. 

The central part of this room is inclosed by a 
low quadrangular counter separated into sec- 
tions by slender posts bearing the letters of the 
alphabet from "A" to '^7iP Around the square 
formed by this counter the baggage of the passen- 
gers is distributed for inspection, every trunk 
being placed under or near the letter that begins 
the owner's name. 

In the center of the baggage-counter inclosure 

88 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

is a bare wooden table, at which sit half a dozen 
uniformed police officers and secret-service de- 
tectives, whose business it is to examine pass- 
ports. 

As fast as the trunks are distributed in the let- 
tered sections they are opened and inspected by 
the customs officers, and, at the same time, the 
passports are handed over the counter to the 
police, who take them to the central table, ex- 
amine them carefully, make sure that they have 
been properly viseed, and see that the names of 
the bearers are not on the official list of persons 
who, for one reason or another, are not permitted 
to enter the empire. 

As the room contains no seats, passengers are 
obliged to stand until their personal effects have 
been inspected and their passports examined and 
stamped. They then show their documents to an 
armed soldier, who stands at a side door, and are 
permitted to pass into the waiting room of the 
station, where there is a good restaurant, and 
where they may take dinner if they feel so in- 
clined before getting into the train for St. Peters- 
burg. 

So far as passengers from western Europe are 
concerned, the threshold of the door where the 
armed soldier stands is the boundary line of Rus- 

89 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

sia. While a traveler remains in the baggage- 
and-passport-inspecting department he is, con- 
structively, in Germany ; but as soon as he passes 
the soldier who guards the entrance to the wait- 
ing room he has the freedom of the Russian Em- 
pire, or, at least, such freedom as the empire 
affords. 

When the German train arrived at Verzhbolov 
Mrs. Aldrich was suffering from a severe sick 
headache, and did not feel able to stand while the 
baggage and papers of a trainful of passengers 
were being examined. As soon, therefore, as her 
husband had handed in his passport and trunk 
keys, she asked him to inquire whether she might 
not be permitted to go into the waiting room, 
where she could find a seat and get a cup of tea. 

Mr. Aldrich stepped to the counter and said in 
French to a good-looking young Russian officer : 
"My wife is suffering from a sick headache and is 
hardly able to stand. Can she not be allowed to 
go into the waiting room? I will remain here 
until the passports and baggage have been exam- 
ined." 

The officer looked at Mrs. Aldrich, saw that she 
was really ill, and assuming, of course, that she 
had a passport, which had already been handed 
in, and which her husband would get and return 

90 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

to her after the examination, he replied, with a 
courteous and sympathetic bow: "Certainly. 
I '11 arrange it at once'' ; and, calling a subordi- 
nate, who was standing outside the counter, he 
directed him in Russian to take the lady to the 
door and pass her through. 

Thirty seconds later Mrs. Aldrich, without a 
passport, crossed the threshold which formed 
constructively the boundary line of Russia, and 
sank into a seat at a long, white restaurant table 
on which were vases of tastefully arranged flow- 
ers, crystal bowls of sparkling cut loaf sugar, 
ornamental baskets filled with delicately 
browned "boolkee" or Russian rolls, glittering 
tea glasses in silver holders, artistically stacked 
bottles of Kakhetinski wine from the Caucasus, 
and tall epergnes of polished fruit from the 
sunny hillsides of Asia Minor or the Crimea. 

Recovering a little from the fatigue and the 
car sickness of the long day's ride, Mrs. Aldrich 
ordered a glass of fragrant Kiakhta tea and 
drank it slowly (in Russia), while her husband 
watched the inspection of his baggage and waited 
impatiently for his passport (in Germany). 

About half -past five the customs officials fin- 
ished the examination of trunks and returned the 
keys to their owners, and a few moments later a 

91 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPOET 

police officer who had not seen Mr. Aldrich be- 
fore and who did not know that he had a wife, 
came to the "A" section of the baggage counter, 
holding a passport above his head and calling out 
"Aldrich! Aldrich!" Mr. Aldrich, of course, 
answered promptly to his name and the police 
officer, after glancing first at the passport and 
then at its solitary owner, handed over the docu- 
ment with a courteous "Eezvoltia!" [Be good 
enough to receive] and returned to the table in 
the center of the enclosure. The passport had 
been stamped in dark blue ink with the words : 
"Shown at Verzhbolov, upon entering the Em- 
pire, July — , 188-.'' This stamp was equivalent 
to an order directing the armed sentry at the 
door to pass the bearer of the document into the 
waiting room. 

Mr. Aldrich then rejoined his wife, and half an 
hour later they took seats in the Eussian train 
and started for St. Petersburg, utterly un- 
conscious of the fact that they had broken Eus- 
sian law by making one passport serve for two 
persons, and had deceived and evaded the most 
vigilant and suspicious body of frontier police in 
all Europe. 

But their trouble was yet to come. The scene 
of it had been shifted from Verzhbolov to St. 

92 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

Petersburg, but it was still pending. There is 
a well-known peasant proverb which declares 
that ^'si human being in Russia consists of a body, 
a soul, and a passport''; and Mr. and Mrs. Al- 
drich were soon to learn that it is impossible to 
live, move, or have one's being in the empire of 
the Czars without possessing every one of these 
closely associated elements of human personality. 
A single passport, moreover, will not serve for 
two bodies and two souls, even though the two 
have been made one by the marriage ceremony. 

After a long and uninteresting ride of twenty- 
four hours across the unfenced, scantily culti- 
vated and poverty stricken plains of western 
Russia, Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich reached St. Peters- 
burg; alighted from the train on a platform 
where the number of men in uniform seemed to 
be out of all proportion to the number in civilian 
dress; gave their hand baggage to a bearded 
hackman in a long-skirted, sash-encircled coat, 
and a stiff, low-crowned felt hat ; took their seats 
in a one-horse droshky that seemed hardly bigger 
than a baby wagon for two-year-old twins; and 
jolted away over the rough cobblestone pave- 
ments to the Hotel d'Angleterre [I cannot now 
remember whether Mr. Aldrich told me that they 
went to the" Hotel d'Angleterre or the Hotel de 

93 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

France ; but for the purposes of this narrative it 
makes no difference] . 

As soon as they had selected rooms, the man- 
ager called upon them and asked them for their 
passports, which, he said, must be sent that even- 
ing to the police station of the Admiralty pre- 
cinct for registry. When Mr. Aldrich produced 
his single passport the manager said: "It will 
be necessary to have madame's also." 

"But,'' replied Mr. Aldrich, "madame is my 
wife, and is included in my passport ; she has n't 
any of her own." 

The manager shook his head and said that he 
did not think the police would be satisfied with 
one passport for two people. 

"Why not?" inquired Mr. Aldrich. "We 
crossed the frontier together on one passport. If 
it had n't been all right they would n't have let 
us in." 

The manager still seemed to be doubtful, but 
as he had no reply ready for this argument, and 
did not himself understand how they had suc- 
ceeded in getting across the frontier, he took the 
passport, bowed, and withdrew. 

At the front entrance of every hotel in St. 
Petersburg there is a large blackboard bearing 
the numbers of the hotel rooms, upon which the 

94 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

names of guests are "clialked up" as they arrive. 
Whether this is meant to be a convenience for 
persons wishing to know who are staying in the 
hotel, or whether it is intended to facilitate the 
work of the officials whose duty it is to keep track 
of strangers, I do not know ; but, in either case, it 
serves as a register, which passers-by may inspect 
without going beyond the front door. 

The police of the Admiralty precinct were not 
long in discovering that the blackboard of the 
Hotel d'Angleterre bore the names of two per- 
sons who called themselves "Aldrich," while only 
one "Aldrich" passport had been sent to the 
precinct station-house for registry. 

This, clearly, was a matter that needed investi- 
gation. It might be a new stratagem of the 
nihilists— an attempt to shelter a politically 
dangerous Russian woman, possibly a bomb- 
thrower, under the name and passport of an 
American sympathizer. It was well known, 
even in Russia, that among the residents of Bos- 
ton, New York, and Chicago there were all sorts 
of American citizens, from politically untrust- 
worthy Polish refugees to Russian traitors and 
Jewish anarchists. A "bird'' of such feather 
might easily come to Russia to help on "the 
cause," and might try to shelter under his wing 

95 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

a female nihilist, who, if her real name were 
known, would be liable to immediate arrest. At 
any rate, the woman must be satisfactorily ac- 
counted for in some way. She could not have^ 
come with the man from the United States, be- 
cause the frontier police never would have per- 
mitted her to enter the empire without a pass- 
port. ^^Thomas Bailey Aldrich," alone, might 
be a commercial traveler or an innocent Cook's 
tourist, but ^^Thomas Bailey Aldrich" plus an 
unexplained woman formed an extremely sus- 
picious, if not a criminal, combination. 

Before Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich had fully recov- 
ered from the fatigue of their long journey across 
Europe a boy appeared at their door with the 
announcement that a police officer from the Ad- 
miralty precinct was below and wanted to see 
them. 

^^Send him up," said Mr. Aldrich, with the 
prompt decision of a man who has never had 
reason to dodge the police; "he probably wants 
further information about that confounded pass- 
port." 

In a few moments the manager appeared in a 
state of obvious perturbation, and ushered in an 
officer in blue uniform, who glanced sharply at 

96 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

Mrs. Aldrlch, and then said, bowing courteously 
to her husband, "Excuse me, please ; I have been 
sent to get the lady's passport." 

"Tell him," said Mr. Aldrich to the manager, 
"that the lady is my wife, and that she has n't 
any separate passport." 

"Where did the lady deign to come from?" 
inquired the officer, framing his question with a 
scrupulous observance of every Russian form of 
courtesy. 

"She came from Boston with me," replied Mr. 
Aldrich. 

"In what way did she see fit to cross the fron- 
tier without documents?" persisted the officer. 

"Documents!" exclaimed Mr. Aldrich im- 
patiently. "I've got a passport, haven't I? 
And she is my wife. She crossed the frontier 
with me and nobody said a word about separate 
documents for her." 

"It is strictly forbidden," said the officer im- 
pressively. "No lady is allowed to cross the 
frontier without a passport. Madame cannot be 
in Russia without the permission of the Verzh- 
bolov police indorsed on a proper document." 

"But that 's all foolishness !" cried Mr. Aldrich 
hotly. "My wife is in Russia, and the Verzhbo- 

97 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

lov police let her in on my passport. They know 
their business, don't they? And, if not, whose 
fault is it?'' 

The officer evidently regarded further argu- 
ment as unprofitable, and, taking a memorandum 
book from his pocket, made a brief note in it and 
said: "It will be my duty to report that mon- 
sieur came into the empire at Verzhbolov on the 
— th of July, with an American passport, prop- 
erly indorsed, and that madame is pleased to be 
in his company at the Hotel d'Angleterre, St. 
Petersburg, without documents of any kind." 
And, replacing the memorandum book in his 
pocket, he bowed politely again and withdrew. 

Mr. Aldrich was well aware, of course, that 
this would not be the end of the passport misun- 
derstanding, and he was not surprised, therefore, 
when, half an hour later, the police officer reap- 
peared and said, with formal courtesy, "The 
Chief of Police asks that you will be good enough 
to accompany me to his office." 

"I suppose that is equivalent to an order for 
my arrest," said Mr. Aldrich to the manager; 
"but could anything be more stupid? The police 
at the frontier let us in on one passport, and then 
the St. Petersburg police arrest us because we 
have n't two. If we were traveling with a baby, 

98 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

I presume they 'd want a third. Item : One 
baby; features undeveloped; stature, knee-high 
to a grasshopper; name, not yet decided upon; 
occupation, tourist, chaperoning his parents ; but 
what preposterous nonsense! I wonder if the 
Chief of Police will put brass tags on us !" 

Mr. Aldrich, his courier and the officer, then 
descended the stairs to the front entrance; 
passed the blackboard whose inscription "Al- 
drich 2" had first called attention to the numer- 
ical discrepancy between bodies and passports; 
took seats in droshkies, under the curious scru- 
tiny of three or four Russian bystanders who 
whispered "politicheski" [politicals] as they 
passed ; and were driven to the office of the Chief 
of Police. There they found a middle-aged, uni- 
formed official, with a severe countenance and 
short upstanding hair, who was sitting at a flat- 
topped desk, receiving reports from three or four 
police officers and detectives, who stood in re- 
spectful attitudes under a large oil portrait of 
the Czar. 

Requesting his involuntary guest from the 
United States to take a seat, the bristle-haired 
official, addressing Mr. Aldrich through his 
courier, began his examination as follows: 

"Do you understand Russian?'' 

99 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

"Not a word/^ replied Mr. Aldrich. 

"What is your name?'' 

"Thomas Bailey Aldrich." 

"Your passport states that you are an Ameri- 
can citizen; what is your place of residence in 
America?" 

"Boston, Mass." 

"Have you ever been in Russia before?" 

"I have; I spent a few days here some years 
ago." 

"Ah! Then this is not your first visit. Tour- 
ists don't often come to Russia twice." 

"I should n't think they would," remarked Mr. 
Aldrich dryly, "if it 's your practice to arrest all 
who come a second time." 

"Are your visits to Russia made for business 
purposes?" 

"Fortunately they are not. Are business men 
under suspicion? I thought only authors, stu- 
dents, and Jews were arrested at sight." 

"Nobody is arrested who obeys the laws," said 
the official severely. "What is your occupa- 
tion?" 

"To this question," said Mr. Aldrich in telling 
the story afterward, "I did n't know exactly 
what reply to make. I thought of calling myself 
a poet ; but I wasn't at all sure that my claim to 

100 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

that distinction would be universally recognized. 
In Boston, at least, there were differences of 
opinion with regard to it. So I finally described 
myself modestly as an editor.'' 

This reply seemed to excite more interest than 
the fact itself warranted. The group of officers 
exchanged significant glances, and in their half- 
whispered comments Mr. Aldrich caught the 
word ^^zhoornalist." Realizing too late that it 
was a mistake to call himself an editor in a coun- 
try where the press was so largely revolutionary, 
he hastened to explain that although he was a 
"zhoornalist," he was not a political "zhoornal- 
ist," but the editor of a literary magazine, which 
had never made any attempt to cover the field of 
foreign politics. This, he thought, would set 
matters right and prevent any possible misunder- 
standing as to his purpose in visiting Russia. 
To his great surprise, however, this reply 
seemed to make matters worse. The Chief of 
Police turned on him quickly and said : 

"Didn't you tell me a minute ago that you 
were wholly ignorant of Russian — that you 
did n't know a word of it?" 

"Yes," replied Mr. Aldrich, "and I don't know 
a word of it." 

"But you understood what we were saying 

101 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

about your profession, although the interpreter 
did n't translate it to you." 

^^I caught the single word ^zhoomalist,' and 
that is so much like our corresponding English 
word that I recognized it. I did n't understand 
anything else that you said." 

The Chief of Police transfixed the editor of The 
Atlantic Monthly with a piercing glance of scru- 
tiny, but for a moment said nothing. Then, ap- 
parently, he thought of a test that would con- 
clusively settle the question of Mr. Aldrich's 
acquaintance with Russian. If he knew any- 
thing at all of that language, he never could 
stand being grossly insulted in it. A man may 
have self-control enough to refrain from answer- 
ing an insult with a blow, but when he is called 
a swindler, a liar, and a thief he will react per- 
ceptibly in some way, provided the words convey 
any meaning to his mind. 

Watching Mr. Aldrich intently, the Chief of 
Police said slowly in a level monotone and with- 
out emphasis: "Gdai tee nashol ettu babu, 
moshenik tee etakoi? Kak tee smeyesh poka- 
zatsa v' poradochnoi gostinitze s' baboi oo koto- 
roi dazhe passporta nyett? Ya tebia pashloo v' 
tiurmoo, tee s — s — , shtob droogoi ras tee ne smiel 
obmaneevat nachalstva." ["Where did you pick 

102 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

up that woman, you lying swindler? How dare 
you show yourself in a respectable hotel with a 
woman who has n't even a passport? I '11 send 

you to jail, you , so that another time 

you '11 know better than to try to deceive the 
authorities."] 

"What does he say?" inquired Mr. Aldrich, 
turning to his courier with a cheerful air of ex- 
pectant interest. 

But the courier was evidently in distress. His 
face was flushed, and little drops of perspiration 
appeared on his forehead. 

"It 's nothing — nothing at all," he stammered. 
"I don't know how to — but don't pay any atten- 
tion — he was talking to himself. You don't have 
to answer — it 's of no consequence — I '11 tell you 
later." 

The Chief of Police, having thus satisfied him- 
self, experimentally, that Mr. Aldrich knew no 
Russian, proceeded with his examination as fol- 
lows : 

"What is the object of your present visit to 
Russia?" 

Mr. Aldrich might have replied that he was in 
search of local color for a poem to be entitled 
"God Save the Czar" ^ but he contented himself 

1 He wrote this poem after his return from Russia. Its 

103 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPOKT 

with the statement that he merely wished to see 
the country and the people. 

"You have said that the lady who accompanies 
you is your wife." 

"She is.'' 

"Did she come from America with you V^ 

"She did.'' 

"How did she get across the frontier without 
a passport?" 

"She crossed on my passport, which includes 
us both." 

"But the frontier police do not allow two per- 
sons to enter the empire on one passport." 

"They did allow it in this case." 

"Was madame with you when you showed your 
passport to the sentry at the door of the waiting 
room at Verzhbolov?" 

Suddenly it flashed upon Mr. Aldrich that his 
wife was not with him when he passed the sentry 
— she had been allowed to precede him because 
she was ill. Neither was she with him when the 

nature was such that it would have made another visit to 
the empire inexpedient, if not impracticable. He also began 
a Russian story, to be entitled "The Little Blue Coupe," but 
whether he ever finished it or not, I do not know. It does 
not appear in his published works. The subject was sug- 
gested by the bullet-pierced coupe in which the Czar was 
riding when an attempt was made to assassinate him. — 
G. K. 

104 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

police officer came to the baggage counter, hold- 
ing a paper above his head and calling out "Al- 
drich! Aldrich!" That happened in Germany 
and Mrs. Aldrich was already drinking tea in 
Russia. She had crossed the frontier on the 
passport of a sick headache ! 

When Mr. Aldrich, with evident frankness and 
sincerity, made this explanation to the Chief of 
Police the latter modified a little the severity of 
his demeanor. Perhaps, after all, these travel- 
ers were not nihilistic wolves in sheep's clothing. 
The explanation seemed to show inexcusable if 
not incredible carelessness on the part of the 
frontier police, but it was plausible — very plaus- 
ible. Pending verification of the story, however, 
it was clearly his duty to detain both of the sus- 
pects. If the woman were released she might 
suddenly disappear, and then he would be held 
responsible for any crime that she might subse- 
quently commit. 

After briefly exchanging impressions and opin- 
ions with the other officers who were present the 
Chief of Police turned again to Mr. Aldrich and 
said, with a noticeable access of courtesy : "I re- 
gret to subject you to temporary inconvenience, 
but our regulations with regard to passports are 
very strict, and I shall have to detain you and 

105 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

madame until I can communicate with the fron- 
tier police at Verzhbolov." 

"May I write a note to the American Minis- 
ter?" inquired Mr. Aldrich. 

"That is not forbidden," replied the Chief of 
Police, with an air of surprise. "Are you person- 
ally acquainted with the Minister?" 

"Certainly," said Mr. Aldrich. 

"And does his Excellency, the Minister, know 
madame?" 

"Not yet, but he will when I present her to 
him." 

"Why, that simplifies the whole matter," said 
the Chief of Police, with a forced smile of seem- 
ing friendliness and cordiality. "His Excel- 
lency, the Minister, can issue a passport to 
madame at once, and then her position in St. 
Petersburg will be quite legal. This is evidently 
an unfortunate misunderstanding, due to ma- 
dame's sick headache and to the inexcusable care- 
lessness of our frontier police. They should not 
have allowed you to proceed until they had ex- 
plained to you that a passport for a husband does 
not cover a wife unless she is specifically men- 
tioned and described in it. But it was an acci- 
dent^ — a chance combination of circumstances — 
for which monsieur and madame are not at all to 

106 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 

blame. Will it be convenient for you to go to the 
legation now?'' 

"The sooner the better," replied Mr. Aldrich. 

The relieved "suspect'' then went to the hotel 
for his wife, and, accompanied by the same officer 
who had first visited them, they drove to the 
American Legation, where they surprised Minis- 
ter Hunt by informing him that they were under 
arrest for lack of "documents." Would he not 
be good enough to legalize Mrs. Aldrich's po- 
sition, and complete her personality, by provid- 
ing her body and soul with a passport? The 
Minister welcomed them cordially ; gave Mrs. Al- 
drich a certificate of nationality and personal 
identity, duly authenticated by the seal of the 
legation, and expressed the hope that, as soon as 
they should have the freedom of the city, they 
would do him the honor of dining with him. As 
soon as the matter had been satisfactorily ar- 
ranged, the police officer released Mr. and Mrs. 
Aldrich from custody, and they drove back to the 
Hotel d'Angleterre, congratulating themselves 
upon their escape from the widespread net of 
Russian passport laws and police regulations. 
They were not arrested or questioned again, but 
they had good reason to believe that, throughout 
their subsequent stay in the empire, they were 

107 



A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPOET 

constantly under secret police surveillance, and 
they did not feel wholly free from anxiety and 
apprehension until they recrossed the German 
frontier. 

In every large Eussian prison, there is a row of 
gloomy kameras [cells holding from ten to fifty 
prisoners], intended for vagrants, tramps, and 
unidentified wanderers over the face of the earth. 
In capital letters, above the door of each of these 
kameras, is the single word "Bezpassportni'' 
[passportless]. If the editor of The Atlantic 
Monthly and Mrs. Aldrich had happened to go 
directly from the German frontier to Novgorod, 
Kiev, Tver, or any provincial town where the 
United States had no diplomatic representative, 
their bodies and souls would probably have spent 
the night in one of these cells, while their single 
passport awaited further investigation in the 
"suspect'' file of the local police. 



108 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 



V 

THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

IN originality of conception and ingenuity of 
execution, the escape of Prince Krapotkin 
from tlie prison of the Nikolaievsk Military Hos- 
pital in St. Petersburg in 1876 is probably un- 
paralleled in prison annals. Twelve conspira- 
tors outside the prison took part in it, but not 
one of them was ever arrested or suspected, al- 
though many of them were subsequently ban- 
ished to Siberia for other political offenses. The 
escape was made in broad daylight, about five 
o'clock in the afternoon, in the presence of three 
armed soldiers, and with such novel accessories 
as cherries, opera-hats, a louse, music, a black 
mare, and a microscope. The chances were at 
least ten to one that it would fail, notwithstand- 
ing the extraordinary ingenuity with which it 
was planned; but every device and stratagem 
worked perfectly, and the liberated prisoner 
dined that night in Donon's restaurant, the most 
fashionable in St. Petersburg, while the entire 

111 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

police force of the capital was ransacking the 
city in search of him. Nobody even imagined 
that he would be shrewd and bold enough to take 
his dinner in so public a place, and not a single 
detective looked for him there, although search 
was made in scores of other places, and every exit 
from the city was so carefully guarded that a 
mouse could hardly have crept through unob- 
served. 

Prince Pierre Krapotkin, the hero of this 
extraordinary jail-delivery, is a member of one of 
the oldest noble families in Russia, and was born 
in Moscow on the ninth of December, 1842. He 
received his early education in one of the gym- 
nasia of his native city, and from there he was 
sent to the School of Pages in St. Petersburg, 
where at that time the sons of wealthy families 
of the nobility were trained for a military career. 
In very early youth he showed an adventurous 
spirit and a love of natural science, and when he 
was graduated from the School of Pages, and was 
permitted to choose the branch of the army in 
which he would serve, he asked for and received 
an appointment as first lieutenant in the Ussuri 
regiment of Amur Cossacks, which was then sta- 
tioned in the east-Siberian territory of Trans- 
baikalia. Three or four weeks later he started 

112 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

for liis field of service, and early in July, after a 
journey of nearly four thousand miles with post- 
horses, he reached Irkutsk, and reported to Gen- 
eral Kukel, the goyernor-generars chief of staff. 
Curiously enough, the first duty assigned to him 
was an investigation of the east-Siberian prisons. 
He little thought, while he was noting in his 
memorandum-book the hardships and privations 
of convict life in Transbaikalia, that in less 
than twelve years he himself would be deprived 
of his liberty and would be threatened with in- 
carceration in one of the very prisons he was 
investigating. 

During the ^ye years of his military service, 
Krapotkin made many long and difficult jour- 
neys on horseback through eastern Asia, explor- 
ing the wildest mountain fastnesses of Man- 
churia and Transbaikalia, and writing for the 
Imperial Geographical Society full descriptions 
of the unknown regions that he visited. When, 
therefore, he returned to St. Petersburg in 1867, 
he had an established reputation as an explorer 
and scientist, although he was only twenty-five 
years of age. 

His experience and observations in Siberia had 
so increased his interest in science and so broad- 
ened his views of social and political problems 

113 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

that lie was unwilling to remain longer in the 
service of a government whose methods he disap- 
proved, and in 1867 he resigned his commission 
and entered the St. Petersburg University as a 
student, with the intention of fitting himself 
more thoroughly for scientific work. His father, 
who had opposed his resignation from the army, 
would not give him any financial assistance ; but 
the young scientist managed to support himself 
by teaching and writing for the press until he 
completed his studies. The Imperial Geographi- 
cal Society then elected him secretary of its phys- 
ical-geography section, and sent him to Finland 
to make a study of that country's geological 
structure and glaciers. 

At that time it was his ambition to be ap- 
pointed to the general secretaryship of the 
Geographical Society, a position which would 
give him congenial employment and at the same 
time assure him a livelihood. The coveted ap- 
pointment was tendered to him while he was in 
Finland, but in the meantime he had become so 
deeply interested in the condition of the op- 
pressed Russian peasants and in the movement 
for their enlightenment and emancipation that 
when the offer was finally made, he declined it, in 
order that he might be free to work for an object 

114 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

that seemed to him even more important than the 
advancement of science. The death of his father, 
General Krapotkin, which occurred shortly after- 
ward, put him in possession of a large fortune, 
and finding himself relieved from the necessity 
of seeking remunerative employment as a means 
of self-support, he determined to devote himself 
wholly to the cause of Russian freedom. Under 
the assumed name of Borodin he joined a Social- 
istic circle organized in St. Petersburg by Nicho- 
las Tchaykovsky, and began to distribute forbid- 
den literature to the peasants in the provinces, 
and to give surreptitious talks to working-men 
in the factories, on the state of the country and 
the necessity for a readjustment of social and po- 
litical conditions. 

In those days the life of an agitator or propa- 
gandist outside the walls of a prison was very 
short; and in 1874, at the age of thirty -two, 
Krapotkin was arrested and thrown into the 
fortress of Petropavlovsk. In most civilized 
countries, persons accused or suspected of crime 
are brought into court for preliminary examina- 
tion soon after their arrest, and are indicted and 
tried within a reasonable time; but in Russia, 
where there is no writ of habeas corpus, political 
offenders are often taken into custody on mere 

115 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

suspicion, and are held in solitary confinement 
for two or three years while the police look for 
incriminating evidence against them. In Kra- 
potkin's case, the "preliminary investigation'' 
lasted two years, and during the whole of that 
time the prisoner lay in a dark and damp case- 
ment of the fortress, without legal counsel and 
without any means of compelling the authorities 
to hasten their proceedings. At the request of 
the Imperial Geographical Society, of which he 
was still a member, he was permitted to have 
writing materials, and in the twenty-four months 
of his confinement he wrote the greater part of 
his most important scientific work — a treatise on 
the glacial period in northern Europe and Asia. 
Long before the end of the second year of his 
imprisonment his health began to fail under the 
bad sanitary conditions of his life, and in June, 
1876, when his strength had been greatly reduced 
by scurvy, and w^hen it was thought that he could 
not live more than a few months, he was trans- 
ferred to a small prison connected with the Niko- 
laievsk Military Hospital, in the northern out- 
skirts of the city. This prison was primarily 
intended for the detention and treatment of mil- 
itary criminals taken ill while awaiting trial; 
but it was also used occasionally for political 

116 



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THE ESCAPE OF PKINCE KEAPOTKIN 

offenders whose health had broken down in other 
prisons where the conditions of life were more 
trying. 

So long as Krapotkin remained in the fortress 
of Petropavlovsk, it was virtually impossible for 
his friends to set him free or even to communicate 
with him; but as soon as he was transferred to 
the less carefully guarded prison of the military 
hospital, they began to consider plans for his lib- 
eration. Their first step was to make a careful 
study of his environment. The building in 
which he was confined stood directly opposite the 
military hospital, on the other side of the street, 
and was used mainly as a sort of lazaret for sick 
or convalescent soldiers awaiting trial on crim- 
inal charges. Although it occupied a large part 
of the space between two parallel streets, it had 
no opening on either of them, and could be en- 
tered only through a grassy yard, two hundred 
yards long and half as wide, which was inclosed 
by a wooden stockade, and which communicated 
with the street by means of a heavy gate large 
enough to admit wagons. This yard was used 
as a place of deposit for the hospital's winter sup- 
ply of wood; but it also served as an exercise- 
ground for convalescent prisoners, who were 
allowed to walk in it, one at a time, under the 

118 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

supervision of armed sentries. Outside the 
stockade, at the eastern end of the yard, was a 
narrow cross lane uniting the two streets be- 
tween which the prison was situated, and di- 
rectly opposite the southern end of this lane 
stood an unoccupied dwelling-house, or bunga- 
low, the upper windows of which commanded a 
view not only of the lane, but of the whole prison 
yard. 

After making a careful survey of the prison 
and its environment, the conspirators proceeded 
to open communication with Krapotkin. This 
they succeeded in doing through one of the 
lazaret guards, whom they induced to carry notes 
written in cipher between them and Krapotkin. 
For a time neither the prisoner nor his friends 
could think of any plan of escape that gave 
promise of success ; but while they were carrying 
on their correspondence with regard to ways 
and means, an event occurred that gave them a 
suggestion. The authorities of the military hos- 
pital began to lay in their winter supply of fire- 
wood. This, perhaps, would have had little sig- 
nificance if the wood had been stored in or about 
the hospital itself; but it was not. It was taken 
into the spacious yard of the lazaret and piled 
against the stockade at the eastern end of the 

119 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

inclosure. In order to permit the entrance of 
the wood carts, the street gate was opened at 
short intervals daily for several weeks, and was 
frequently left open for an hour at a time while 
the drivers of the carts unloaded and piled their 
wood. In any other than a hospital prison, this 
gate would undoubtedly have been guarded by a 
sentry; but inasmuch as the occupants of the 
lazaret were all weak from sickness, it was not 
thought likely that they would attempt to escape 
even through an open gate. Day and night two 
sentries paced back and forth in front of the 
prison door, and when the convalescent prisoners 
were allowed, one at a time, to walk for exercise 
in the yard, they were incessantly watched, and 
were restricted to the path worn out in the grass 
by the sentries' feet. They would have to run a 
hundred yards in order to reach the gate, and 
even if sick men w^ere able to do this, they would 
almost certainly be overtaken by the sentries be- 
fore they could get out into the street. The risk 
of opening the gate, therefore, or even of leaving 
it open, seemed to the prison authorities so 
trifling as to be negligible. Krapotkin's friends, 
however, estimated the chances differently. 
They believed that if an unfettered prisoner 
should make a dash for the gate at an opportune 

120 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

time, when neither of the two sentries was near 
him, it was not at all improbable that he might 
outstrip pursuit and reach the street in safety. 
Of course one of the sentries might shoot him, 
but this risk would have to be taken. Krapotkin 
was not so likely to be shot as an ordinary 
prisoner would be, because he was known to be 
a political offender of high rank and position, 
whom it would be unsafe to kill without express 
orders. Then, too, the sentries would confi- 
dently expect to overtake and recapture alive a 
man who had recently left a hospital bed and 
who was presumably utterly incapable of violent 
physical exertion. Krapotkin, however, was not 
so weak as he seemed to be. A month of good air 
and nourishing food had largely restored his 
strength, and when the dash for the gate was pro- 
posed to him by his friends outside, he assured 
them that he felt quite capable of undertaking it, 
and that he believed he could reach the street in 
safety. This feature of the plan was therefore 
agreed upon. In the course of his daily walk be- 
tween four and five o'clock in the afternoon, Kra- 
potkin was to watch for an opportunity to dart 
through the gate when it should be left open by 
incoming wood carts, and his friends outside 
were to have a fast horse and a vehicle waiting 

121 



THE ESCAPE OF PEINCE KKAPOTKIN 

for him on the prison side of the street, and as 
near to the gate as possible. 

There were three serious dangers, however, 
which would have to be guarded against. The 
street upon which the prison yard opened ran 
eastward into the northern end of the Nevskii 
Prospekt, and it was not thought prudent to try 
that route. The fugitive, therefore, would have 
to turn into the narrow lane at the eastern end 
of the yard, cross through it to the next parallel 
street, and then take another lane leading to an 
unfrequented part of the suburbs. This, how- 
ever, was precisely the route followed by the 
wood carts, and at the critical moment the latter 
might obstruct or block the way. The first lane, 
moreover, and the streets that it united were 
included in the beat of a policeman who was on 
duty every afternoon, and who might be roused 
to decisive action by the hue and cry that would 
follow the escape. This policeman, therefore, 
must be removed. Finally, an armed sentry 
stood at the entrance to the military hospital, 
just across the street from the prison, and there 
was danger that he might shoot either at Krapot- 
kin as the latter emerged from the gate or at the 
horse that carried him away. If possible, there- 
fore, this sentry must be temporarily disarmed. 

122 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

The next step in tlie plot of the conspirators 
was to make the sentries and the prison authori- 
ties so familiar with the vehicle to be used that 
they would not regard it with suspicion when it 
should wait for Krapotkin in front of the gate. 
Two weeks before the day fixed for the escape, a 
highly polished and fashionable droshky, drawn 
by a stylish black mare and driven by a coachman 
in livery, brought to the entrance of the military 
hospital a richly dressed lady and gentleman, 
evidently persons of wealth and rank, who had 
apparently come to the hospital to see or inquire 
about some sick officer in whom they were inter- 
ested. Both alighted and entered the immense 
building, while the coachman, in order to make 
room for any vehicle that might come later, drove 
ahead a little, and stopped to wait nearly in 
front of the sentry-box. Ten or fifteen minutes 
later the gentleman and lady came out of the 
hospital, reentered their vehicle, and were driven 
away in the direction of the Nevskii Prospekt. 
The gentleman was Dr. Crest Edward Veimar, a 
wealthy surgeon of St. Petersburg, who thought 
out most of the stratagems of the plan and took 
the leading part in its execution ; the lady was an 
intimate personal friend of Krapotkin; and 
the coachman was a member of the Tchaykov- 

123 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

sky Socialistic circle to which Krapotkin be- 
longed. 

Every day or two thereafter, for a whole fort- 
night, Dr. Veimar and his companions repeated 
this manoeuver, until the sentries and prison 
authorities finally became so accustomed to see- 
ing this droshky bring a lady and gentleman to 
the military hospital that they paid no further 
attention to it. At first the coachman waited for 
his passengers just beyond the hospital entrance 
and on that side of the street ; but in the second 
week, when everybody had become familiar with 
the vehicle, he ventured to cross over and wait on 
the other side, near the gate of the prison yard. 
Sometimes Dr. Veimar went into the hospital 
with the lady who accompanied him, sometimes 
he remained outside in the droshky; but before 
the end of the second week nobody noticed what 
he did or where the droshky waited. The vehicle 
and its occupants had ceased to attract attention 
and had become a semi-permanent feature of the 
environment. 

While Dr. Veimar and his associates were thus 
familiarizing the prison authorities and the sen- 
tries with the vehicle to be used, the other con- 
spirators were finding out who owned the unoccu- 
pied bungalow south of the prison yard, devising 

124 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

a scheme for disarming tlie sentry at the hospital 
door, and investigating the life and circum- 
stances of the obnoxious policeman. The bunga- 
low was found to be for rent, and the conspira- 
tors promptly took a lease of it and established 
themselves securely in a position from which they 
could overlook the prison yard, the transverse 
lane, and both the streets into which the lane 
opened. The policeman proved to be a quiet, 
middle-aged man who had a house in the neigh- 
borhood, and who eked out a small salary by 
renting rooms to respectable persons of moderate 
means in the social class to which he belonged. 
One of his rooms was vacant, and the conspira- 
tors ascertained what it was like and how much 
the owner expected to get for it. Through the 
friendly soldier in the lazaret who carried notes 
for them, they also found out whose turn it would 
be to take sentry duty at the door of the military 
hospital on the day fixed for the escape, and how 
the man could best be approached. 

When all these preliminaries ^ had been ar- 
ranged, Krapotkin's friends notified him that 
from half-past four to half-past five o'clock on 
the afternoon of July 12, a droshky with a fast 
horse would wait for him just outside the gate 
of the prison yard. When in the course of his 

125 



THE ESCAPE OF PKINCE KRAPOTKIN 

walk he was ready to risk the dash for the gate, 
he was to take oif his hat. If at that time every- 
thing had gone satisfactorily outside, he would 
hear the music of a violin played softly near an 
open window in the bungalow that his friends 
had leased. So long as the music continued he 
was to understand that the way outside was 
clear, and that he was at liberty to make the 
rush for the gate at the first favorable oppor- 
tunity; but if the music should cease, he must 
take it as an indication of unforeseen trouble, 
and wait. The last instructions given him were : 
"Once in the street, don't give yourself up. 
There will be friends to defend you in case of 
need.'' 

About four o'clock on the afternoon of July 12 
the conspirators outside the prison made their 
final dispositions. Some of them hired and car- 
ried away every public vehicle standing within 
a distance of half a mile, so as to leave the prison 
authorities no means of swift pursuit ; some sta- 
tioned themselves along the line of the route fol- 
lowed by the woodcarts; and some took their 
places at the windows of the bungalow that they 
had rented, and watched the military hospital, 
the prison yard, and the streets. At half-past 
four the well-known droshky made its seventh or 

126 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIK 

eighth appearance at the door of the military 
hospital. One of its occupants — the lady who 
had so often been seen before — alighted and en- 
tered the building, while the other two drove 
across the street as usual, and stopped to wait 
ten or fifteen feet east of the gate through which 
Krapotkin was to make his dash. At that time, 
the gate was closed ; but the teamsters had been 
drawing wood all day, and just before ^ye o'clock 
the sentinels signaled that half a dozen carts had 
just started for the prison with loads. Two or 
three minutes later a bareheaded peasant, in red 
shirt, black velveteen trousers, and dusty top- 
boots, strolled along the street in front of the 
military hospital, seated himself on the curb of 
the sidewalk opposite the lane, and began to eat 
ripe cherries out of his hat, which he held be- 
tween his knees. The sentry at the door of the 
military hospital could not be seen from the win- 
dows of the conspirators' bungalow, on account 
of an intervening corner of the prison ; and this 
peasant was a disguised conspirator whose duty 
it was to watch the attempt to disarm the sentry 
and to signal to the house whether it succeeded or 
not. His signals could be seen through the lane, 
and in order that they should not attract atten- 
tion, they were to be made by spitting out the 

127 



THE ESCAPE OF PEINCE KPvAPOTKIN 

cherry stones, or throwing them away to the right 
or left, in accordance with a prearranged code. 

Two minutes after this peasant took his seat 
on the curb, a smooth-faced young man, in worn 
but respectable clothing, who looked as though 
he might be a poorly paid department clerk, ap- 
proached the policeman, who was standing list- 
lessly at the intersection of the southern street 
and the lane, and began to make inquiries about 
rooms to rent in that neighborhood. 

^^What kind of room do you want?" asked the 
policeman. 

The conspirator described in a general way the 
room that he knew was available. 

"I have a room of that kind myself," said the 
policeman, ^^and it is n't at all dear. Perhaps 
it 's the very thing you 're looking for." 

After some talk about terms, the conspirator 
asked to see it. 

^^I can't show it to you now," said the police- 
man, "but I shall be off duty at six o'clock, and if 
you '11 meet me here then, I '11 take you to the 
house." 

The conspirator, however, could not be there 
at six o'clock, and wanted to see the room at 
once. "Is it far?" he inquired. 

"No," said the policeman ; "it 's quite near." 

128 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

"Well, then, let ^s go. It won't take you long, 
and there 's nothing doing here." 

The policeman was anxious to rent his room; 
there was not one chance in twenty that a short 
absence from his beat would be noticed in that 
sleepy neighborhood ; and after assuring himself 
by a glance around that there was not a soul in 
sight except the peasant sitting on the curb at 
the other end of the lane and eating cherries out 
of his hat, he consented to go. 

The conspirator and the policeman had hardly 
left the street south of the prison when a train of 
six carts entered the lane, turned the corner into 
the hospital street, passed through the gate, and 
proceeded to the eastern end of the prison yard, 
where the wood was being piled against the 
stockade. As they expected to return soon, they 
left the gate open. 

Two minutes later, a slightly intoxicated peas- 
ant made his appearance in front of the military 
hospital, and stopped to "pass the time of day" 
with the sentry at the door. Soldiers on duty 
are not supposed to talk with casual passers-by ; 
but this particular soldier was himself a peasant ; 
he had found it tiresome and monotonous to 
stand all day before a sentry-box in a hot sun, 
and he was glad of an opportunity to talk with a 

129 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

man of his own class who was just drunk enough 
to be amusing. The conversation drifted from, 
one thing to another until the disguised con- 
spirator began to describe to the peasant soldier 
some of the wonderful things that he had re- 
cently seen at a public exhibition given for the 
entertainment and enlightenment of the common 
people. Among them was a marvelous instru- 
ment which, when one looked through it, made a 
louse appear as big as a dog. 

^^Cross yourself!'' exclaimed the soldier, in- 
credulously. ^^Nothing could make a louse 
appear as big as a dog. You were probably 
drunk." 

The conspirator, however, insisted, with ear- 
nest if somewhat incoherent eloquence, that such 
was the effect produced by the instrument which 
he saw. "And what 's more," he added, "if you 
don't believe in God's miracles, I can show you 
one of those things right here. It 's a small, 
cheap one, — I had to go without a pair of new 
boots to buy it, — and of course it won't make a 
louse into a dog ; but it '11 make one look as big 
as a cat, and I can prove it to you. Drunk, am I? 
I have n't had but two drinks to-day. And, any- 
how, the instrument is n't drunk. Look at this !" 
The speaker produced triumphantly a small, 

130 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

cheap microscope. The peasant soldier was in- 
terested. He did not believe for a moment that 
a trumpery little brass contrivance like that 
could possibly change the size of an insect or an 
animal; but he did want to see what a louse 
would look like through it, and when the peasant 
proposed that a search be made in his hair for the 
necessary specimen, the soldier set his rifle 
against the sentry-box and began the entomolog- 
ical quest, the peasant, to facilitate operations, 
getting dow^n on his knees. 

The peasant who was sitting on the curb two 
hundred yards away eating cherries out of his 
hat took two cherry-pits from his mouth, one 
after the other, and threw them carelessly to the 
right. It was the final signal: ^^All safe out- 
side, the sentry is disarmed." 

There was absolutely nothing in the whole en- 
vironment to suggest a crisis, and yet the su- 
preme moment had come, and thirteen hearts 
were beating fast with anxiety and excitement. 

A moment later the motionless summer air was 
gently stirred by the music of a violin. An un- 
seen performer in the bungalow was playing 
softly Schubert's "Serenade." Krapotkin heard 
it, and loosening his arms in the sleeves of his 
long, green-flannel dressing-gown, walked slowly 

131 



•V 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

along the path toward the end that was nearest 
to the gate, watching with fierce impatience for a 
favorable opportunity to run. As the sentries 
paced back and forth on their beat, they hap- 
pened to come together near the end of the path 
that was farthest from the gate while Krapotkin 
was at the near end. The hidden violinist no- 
ticed the lucky chance and, suddenly changing 
time and melody, swept into one of Kontsky's 
rapid riotous mazurkas, as though to say : "Run ! 
Run! It's now or never!'' Krapotkin started 
at top-speed for the gate, throwing off his dress- 
ing-gown as he ran. Both sentries pursued him, 
and one of them got so near that he could have 
shot him in the back without a chance of missing ; 
but as he had no orders to kill, and still hoped 
to take the fugitive alive, he did not fire. Kra- 
potkin burst through the gate, with the sentry at 
his heels, and cast himself headlong into the 
droshky, where stood Dr. Veimar with a cocked 
revolver in his hand. The black mare, trained 
specially for this emergency, started instantly at 
full speed, and turned so suddenly and rapidly 
into the lane that both passengers were nearly 
pitched out. In the lane Dr. Veimar threw around 
Krapotkin one of the light black cloaks often worn 
by gentlemen to protect their frock coats from 

132 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

dust, and opened and put on Ms head an opera- 
hat. He then made a similar change in his own 
dress, so that when they turned into the next 
street south, they looked like two gentlemen go- 
ing to or returning from an afternoon reception. 

They drove first to the house of Krapotkin's 
sister-in-law, where the fugitive's clothing was 
changed, and then to a remote barber shop on one 
of the islands in the Neva, where his huge, flow- 
ing beard was removed. At the suggestion of 
Dr. Veimar, they then went to Donon's restau- 
rant in the city, and there in a private room they 
took their dinner and spent the evening. The 
house of Krapotkin's sister-in-law, where he first 
stopped, was searched by the police almost imme- 
diately after he left it, and searches were made 
that evening in all the other houses where it was 
thought possible that he might be; but the 
shrewdest detective never imagined that he could 
be dining almost openly in one of the most fash- 
ionable places of public resort in St. Petersburg. 

All the conspirators in the plot vanished in the 
confusion and excitement that followed the 
escape. The lady left the military hospital by a 
rear door opening on another street; the watchers 
in the bungalow abandoned their newly leased 
premises, and were seen no more ; and as for the 

133 



THE ESCAPE OF PKINCE KRAPOTKIN 

poor department clerk who wished to rent a 
room, the red-shirted peasant with the hatful of 
cherries, and the half-intoxicated peasant with 
the cheap microscope, nobody ever suspected that 
they were conspirators or that their relation to 
the affair was anything more than accidental. 

Dr. Veimar was afterward sent to the mines 
of Kara for alleged complicity in the assassina- 
tion of General Mezentsef ; and one of the watch- 
ers in the bungalow, who gave this story to me 
and drew the accompanying plan, was exiled by 
administrative process to eastern Siberia for 
"political untrustworthiness'' ; but, as far as I 
know, their connection with this plot was never 
suspected. Dr. Viemar died at the mines, and 
for that reason I have felt at liberty to mention 
his name. 

A few days after his escape, Krapotkin, 
equipped with the passport of a friend, crossed 
Finland by an unfrequented route, took a 
Swedish steamer at a remote port on the Gulf of 
Bothnia, and made his way, by Christiania and 
Hull, to Edinburgh. He is now living near Lon- 
don with his wife, and as all his Russian prop- 
erty has been confiscated by the government, he 
is compelled to support himself by literary work. 
He has been a frequent contributor to Nature; 

134 



THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 

his name appears often in the proceedings of the 
Royal Geographical Society ; he is the author of 
important articles in the Encyclopaedia Britan- 
nica, Chambers' Encyclopaedia, and the "States- 
man's Year-Book'' ; and his articles on scientific 
subjects were for many years a feature of the 
Nineteenth Century review. His sister Helene 
and his sister-in-law the Princess Krapotkin were 
both arrested and thrown into prison in St. 
Petersburg after his escape, and his brother Alex- 
ander was banished to Siberia, where, after many 
years of suffering, he committed suicide. Kra- 
potkin himself never has returned to Russia, and 
probably never will return, since there is at pres- 
ent nothing to indicate that the empire of the 
Czar will be in the near future a safe place of 
residence for a thinking man. 



135 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'' 



VI 

"A HEAET FOE EVERY FATE" 

NOW and then, the orbit of almost every 
human life is crossed by a character whose 
fortitude in suffering and indomitable courage 
in adversity put to shame the weakness of the 
faint-hearted, raise the standards of the daunt- 
less, and compel even the cynic and the pessimist 
to admit that man, at his best, is bigger perhaps 
than anything that can happen to him. Such a 
character came into my life when I made the 
acquaintance of the exiled Eussian poet Felix 
Vadimovitch Volkhovsky. I met him first in the 
west-Siberian city of Tomsk. ^ He was then 
thirty -eight years of age and was a man of culti- 
vated mind, warm heart, and high aspirations. 
He knew English well, was familiar with Ameri- 
can history and literature, and had translated 

1 This meeting was described in the Century Magazine 
many years ago ; but Volkhovsky, at that time, was still in 
exile, and the adventures that I purpose to relate were still 
in the future. — G. K. 

139 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 

into Russian many of the poems of Longfellow. 
He spoke to me with great admiration, I remem- 
ber, of Longfellow's "Arsenal at Springfield," 
and recited it to me aloud. He was one of the 
most winning and lovable men that it has ever 
been my good fortune to know; but his life had 
been full of tragedy and suffering. His health 
had been shattered by long imprisonment in the 
fortress of Petropavlovsk ; his hair was prema- 
turely gray; and when his face was in repose 
there seemed to be an expression of profound 
melancholy in his dark-brown eyes. I became 
intimately acquainted with him, and very 
warmly attached to him; and when I bade him 
good-by, on my return from the mines of Kara, 
he put his arms around me and kissed me and 
said : "George Ivanovitch, please don't forget us ! 
In bidding you good-by, I feel as if something 
were going out of my life that would never again 
come into it." 

Volkhovsky's story, as it was told to me by his 
comrades, was a sad but inspiring narrative of 
brave and generous endeavor, thwarted and frus- 
trated by despotic repression. He was born in 
1847, in the south of Russia, where his parents 
had an estate ; and he spent all the earlier years 
of his life at home. The sympathy with the Rus- 

140 



"A HEAET FOR EVERY FATE" 

sian peasants and the desire to improve their 
condition that were so characteristic of his man- 
hood found expression in his attitude toward 
them, even as a child. When he was only seven 
years of age, he happened to see a serf flogged 
on his father's estate ; and this first experience of 
what seemed to him shocking cruelty and injus- 
tice so aroused and excited him that he rushed 
into the house, with tear-filled eyes, doubled up 
his little fists, and attacked furiously his cold 
and austere grandfather — the first man of the 
family that he chanced to come across. For this 
outburst of indignation and disrespect he was 
promptly punished; but the incident made a 
deep impression upon his childish mind, and first 
led him to think about the social and political 
conditions that authorized and empowered one 
man to have another man mercilessly flogged 
with a whip. As the twig is bent the tree is 
inclined; and the direction given to the boy's 
thoughts by the flogging of a serf determined, in 
large part, his future career, and made him, 
eventually, a reformer, a member of the party of 
"The People's Will," and a revolutionist. 

In 1865 or 1866, he entered the Moscow Univer- 
sity, and two or three years later joined Herman 
Lopatin, a fellow-student, in an attempt to raise 

141 



"A HEAKT FOR EVERY FATE'' 

money for the purpose of sending teachers and 
books to the peasants in the agricultural vil- 
lages.^ In this work there was nothing illegal, 
because the serfs had just been emancipated, and 
the government professed an intention to have 
them educated. The administration, however, 
and especially the police, regarded with suspicion 
every attempt to enlighten the common people 
that had not been officially authorized and sanc- 

2 Lopatin afterward became one of the most daring and 
resourceful of the Russian revolutionists. He was often im- 
prisoned and exiled ; made half a dozen remarkable escapes ; 
set free the exiled Russian author Lavrof ; attempted, in the 
disguise of a gendarme oflScer, to liberate the exiled political 
economist Chernyshevski ; became a member of the execu- 
tive committee of the revolutionary party ; and was finally 
arrested, for the sixth or seventh time, tried for high trea- 
son, found guilty, and condemned to death. His sentence 
was subsequently commuted to imprisonment for life, and 
shortly after my return from my second Siberian expedition 
he was incarcerated in the fortress of Schlusselburg, where 
he spent eighteen years. In November, 1905, just after the 
promulgation of the Freedom Manifesto, he was released; 
but he was then a broken-down invalid, sixty years of age. 
In the intervals betw^een his terms of imprisonment and exile, 
he translated into Russian Herbert Spencer's "Psychology," 
"Sociology," and "Ethics" ; the first volume of Taine's "Or- 
igines de la France Contemporaine" ; Grant Allen's "Evolu- 
tionist at Large," and a number of other well known French 
and English books of a scientific or historical nature. TUr- 
genief knew him well, and is said to have had him in mind 
when he created the character of Nezhdanof, in "Virgin 
Soil."— G. K. 

142 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 

tioned; and in 1868, at the age of twenty-one, 
Volkhovsky was arrested upon the charge of ex- 
citing discontent among the peasants by furnish- 
ing them with literature of a "pernicious tend- 
ency." He was imprisoned at first at Moscow; 
but two or thr^e weeks later he was taken to St. 
Petersburg and thrown into the fortress of Petro- 
pavlovsk. In one of the dark and sepulchral 
casemates of that great political prison he spent 
eight months. He was then tried by a special 
commission, was found to be innocent, and was 
acquitted. Returning to the south of Russia, he 
settled in Odessa, and was shortly afterward 
married to Miss Antonova of that city, a young 
woman of character and education, who sympa- 
thized with his views and aims, and who herself 
belonged to the class described by the Govern- 
ment as "politically untrustworthy." The do- 
mestic happiness of the young couple, however, 
was of short duration. Volkhovsky himself con- 
tinued to correspond with his friend and comrade 
Lopatin; the latter, who had been exiled to the 
Caucasus, happened to exchange a few letters 
with a revolutionary conspirator named Nech- 
aief ; and in 1869, when Nechaief organized the 
society known as "Obshchestvo Narodnoi Ras- 
pravy" [Retributive Justice of the People] Volk- 

143 



"A HEAET FOR EVERY FATE'' 

hovsky and Lopatin were both arrested, merely 
because intercepted letters showed that one of 
the three had been in correspondence with the 
other two. Lopatin succeeded in escaping from 
his guards, and Nechaief, the real conspirator, 
fled to western Europe ; but Volkhovsky, merely 
because he had been in correspondence with a 
man who had exchanged letters with Nechaief, 
was taken to St. Petersburg and again thrown 
into the fortress of Petropavlovsk.^ 

Solitary confinement in a fortress is not re- 
garded by the Russian Government as the sever- 
est of its non-capital punishments ; but all polit- 
ical offenders who have experienced it agree that 
when it is prolonged beyond a year or two it is 
far more injurious to mind and body than the 
hard labor of penal servitude. I have explored 
to their lowest depths the mines of the trans- 
Baikal, and I know, as well as a mere observer 
can know, the hard conditions of life in them; 
but if I were a political offender, I should much 

3 The facts, as subsequently established by judicial inves- 
tigation, showed that although Lopatin had exchanged let- 
ters with Necljiaief, he did not approve the latter's methods, 
nor take any part in his conspiracy. Volkhovsky had never 
had any relations whatever with Nechaief. (Indictment in 
the "Trial of the 193" before the Governing Senate, p. 12. 
Article "Lopatin" in Russian encyclopedia of Brockhaus 
and Efron, supplementary vol. 2, p. 96.) 

144 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 

rather work for three years in a Nerchinsk silver 
mine than spend three years in one of the crypt- 
like casemates of the Petropavlovski fortress. A 
hard-labor convict in the mines has occupation; 
sees the outside world at least twice a day ; and 
associates with companions in misery who are at 
least human beings ; but a prisoner in one of the 
casemates of the Trubetskoi bastion has nothing 
to do but pace his cell ; sees nothing but the damp 
walls that enclose him ; and meets no one but the 
silent guards who bring him his food, or watch 
him furtively through the narrow "Judas" slit in 
the heavy door. The stillness is that of the 
grave. There is not a footstep, nor a voice, nor a 
sound of any kind to indicate the presence of 
another human being in the bastion. Every fif- 
teen minutes the bells of the fortress cathedral 
chime out slowly the air with which the words 
"Have mercy, O Lord !" are associated in the Rus- 
sian liturgy, and every hour they ring the melody 
of the ecclesiastical chant, "How glorious is our 
Lord in Zion!" The damp, heavy atmosphere, 
the dripping walls, the oppressive silence, and 
the faint muffled tones of the cathedral bells 
chiming mournful airs from the church liturgy, 
all seem to say to the lonely and dejected pris- 
oner, "Although not dead, you are buried." Few 

145 



"A HEAET FOR EVERY FATE" 

men are strong enough to bear, without serious 
impairment of bodily and mental vigor, such 
complete isolation from the world of the living, 
and such entire deprivation of the absolute neces- 
sities of intellectual life. Many prisoners have 
gone insane in those gloomy casemates, and many 
more have come out of them with shattered 
health and broken character. Volkhovsky, how- 
ever, was a young and vigorous man, of dauntless 
courage and invincible fortitude, and he lived 
through two years and a half of isolation and 
loneliness without wholly losing hope or 
strength. His health failed, but he was sus- 
tained to the last by an indomitable spirit. In 
1871 he was tried in the St. Petersburg Chamber 
of Justice, with Vladimir I. Kovalevski and 
eighty-five other prisoners, on the charge of con- 
spiring with Nechaief to overthrow the existing 
form of government. Volkhovsky and Kovalev- 
ski were able to show that they had had no rela- 
tions whatever with Ne€haief, and both were set 
at liberty.^ 

4 Indictment in the "Trial of the 193" before the Govern- 
ing Senate, p. 12 ; Article "Nechaief " in the Russian ency- 
clopedia of Brockhaus and Efron, supplementary volume 2, 
p, 274. As an illustration of the reckless and wholly un- 
justifiable way in which arrests on suspicion were made in 
this case I may mention the fact that Volkhovsky's fellow- 

146 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 

Volkhovsky, at this time, was only twenty -four 
years of age. He had been twice tried for polit- 
ical crime and twice acquitted; but Ms blame- 
less record had not saved him from three years of 
isolation in the gloom and solitude of a bomb- 
proof casemate. As soon as he was released, he 
joined his wife; returned with her to Odessa; en- 
gaged in business there, and established a home. 

It was practically impossible for a young man 
of Volkhovsky's temperament and ideals to re- 
gard with indifference the great movement for 
the enlightenment and elevation of the peasants 
which began in Russia in 1871, and which first 
took definite and practical form in the impulsive, 
generous, but quixotic crusade known as "going 
to the people." Thousands of educated young 
men, fired with an ardent desire to do something 
to atone for the sins of their fathers toward the 
recently emancipated serfs, and filled with pity 
for the latter's ignorance and misery, went into 
the Russian villages, into the suburbs of the 
great cities, into factories, into workshops, into 
all places where the peasants toiled and suffered, 
and sought by sympathy, by cooperation, and by 
personal instruction, to help and elevate the men 

prisoner, Kovalevski, afterwards became Associate Russian 
Minister of Finance. — G. K. 

147 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'' 

and women whom their fathers had bought, sold, 
and flogged. Hundreds of cultivated and refined 
young women, with that singular capacity for 
self-sacrifice which is inherent in the Russian 
character, abandoned their homes and families, 
put on coarse peasant dress, went into the re- 
motest, loneliest, and dreariest villages of the em- 
pire, and, in the capacity of school-teachers, mid- 
wives, or nurses, shared the hard prosaic life of 
the common people, labored with them, suffered 
with them, and bore their burdens, merely in 
order to learn how they could best be helped. 
Something analogous to this took place in our 
own country soon after the close of the Civil War, 
when educated and refined young women from 
the New England States went south to teach in 
negro schools; but the movement in the United 
States never became epidemic, as it did in Rus- 
sia, nor was it ever characterized by the reckless, 
heroic self-sacrifice which illumines so many dark 
pages of Russian history. Volkhovsky was soon 
drawn into this movement, and in 1873, he organ- 
ized in Odessa a "circle" for the promotion of 
popular enlightenment, which was affiliated with 
the famous circle of Tchaykovsky in St. Peters- 
burg.^ These circles, of course, did not escape 

5 Referring to the latter, Prince Krapotkin says, "Never 

148 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'^ 

the vigilant attention of the government. They 
were regarded as seditious in their character, and 
steps were at once taken to put a stop to what 
was believed to be nothing less than a secret 
revolutionary propaganda. 

In 1874 Volkhovsky was arrested, for the third 
time, and taken to Moscow, where he was con- 
fined temporarily in one of the detention cells 
of the gendarmerie. Fearing that her husband 
would not survive another long term of fortress 
imprisonment, Mrs. Volkhovsky, with the aid of 
Vsovolod Lopatin — brother of Herman Lopatin 
— made a daring attempt to set him free while he 
was being taken through the streets from the 
gendarmerie to the Moscow central prison. A 
handful of snuff was thrown into the face of the 
gendarme officer who had him in charge, and 
availing himself promptly of his guard's tem- 
porary blindness, Volkhovsky attempted to 
spring into a droshky that his wife had in wait- 
ing. Just as he reached it, the vehicle started 
ahead at full speed, and the sudden jerk caused 
him to miss his footing. His wife seized his arm 

did I meet elsewhere such a collection of morally superior 
men and women as the score of persons whose acquaintance 
I made at the first meeting of the circle of Tchaykovsky. I 
still feel proud of having been received into that family." 
(Memoirs of a Revolutionist, p. 306.) 

149 



^^A HEAKT FOR EVERY FATE" 

and tried to draw liim into the sleigh, but she was 
not strong enough to hold him. As he fell, he 
grasped one of the uprights of the runner and 
clung desperately to that; but after being 
dragged seventy-five or a hundred feet through 
the snow he lost his hold, and two or three street 
policemen sprang upon him before he could re- 
cover himself. Lopatin attempted to rescue him, 
but both were eventually overpowered.^ Volk- 
hovsky and his wife never saw each other again. 
She broke down completely under the strain of 
disappointment, anxiety and grief ; was forced to 
leave Russia in order to escape arrest ; and event- 
ually went to Italy, where she hoped that she 
might regain her health and strength. Life, 
however, had been too hard for her, and she died 
in Sicily, of a broken heart, just after her hus- 
band had been exiled to Siberia. 

Volkhovsky and Lopatin were taken to St. 
Petersburg where they were thrown into the fort- 
ress of Petropavlovsk to await trial. Then be- 
gan for Volkhovsky another long term of solitary 
confinement, which proved to be even more rigor- 
ous and severe than the preceding terms. His 
casemate cell was gloomy and damp, and as 
month after month and year after year passed, 

6 Indictment in the "Trial of the 193," p. 301. 

150 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'^ 

he not only began tO/Suffer from rheumatism and 
anaemia, but gradually became so deaf that he 
could no longer communicate with his fellow- 
prisoners by means of the knock-alphabet, and 
could hear no more the bells of the fortress cathe- 
dral chiming at the quarter hours, "Have mercy, 
O Lord !" and at midnight, "God Save the Czar." 

The calamity that Volkhovsky feared most was 
impairment of his mental faculties — or complete 
loss of reason — from lack of occupation. A 
prisoner, in such circumstances, is likely to "lose 
his grip," and to sink into mind-destroying 
melancholia, as the result of brooding incessantly 
over his own misfortunes. Volkhovsky, as an 
intelligent and resolute man, determined to com^ 
bat this tendency by every means in his power. 
He avoided, as far as possible, reflection and 
retrospection, and kept his mind active by forc- 
ing it into exercise upon subjects not connected 
with his life. 

He went over all that he could remember 
of Russian history; arranged the facts in 
chronological order; and then put them into the 
best possible rhythmical form, so as to make a 
sort of national epic. In this way he composed 
a poetical history of Russia, in three or four hun- 
dred stanzas, and committed it to memory. He 

151 



"A HEAET FOE EVEKY FATE" 

then thought out and memorized thousands of 
words of doggerel poetry upon all sorts of sub- 
jects suggested to him by his experience or his 
imagination. When I met him in Tomsk, he 
could still repeat hundreds of these verses, which 
had little or no value as poetry, but which were 
interesting on account of the circumstances that 
brought them into existence. 

Volkhovsky's third term of imprisonment 
lasted three years. On the 30th of October, 1877, 
he was arraigned before a special session of the 
Governing Senate convened to try one hundred 
and ninety-three political offenders (including 
Volkhovsky) upon the charge of "organizing an 
illegal society for the purpose of bringing about 
in the near or remote future, the overthrow of the 
present form of government and a change in the 
existing methods of administration." "^ 

At the very beginning of the proceedings, the 
prisoners asked that they be tried together and 
not in separate groups; that they be allowed to 
have their own stenographer; and that the case 
be heard, with open doors, in a room large enough 
to accommodate a fair representation of the pub- 
lic. The court ruled that these requests were 
inadmissible. Most of the accused thereupon 

7 Indictment in the "Trial of the 193," p. 299. 

152 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'' 

declined to plead, or to make any defense; and 
some of them protested so vehemently, and with 
so much intemperance of language, against the 
ruling of the presiding judge (Senator Peters) 
that they were forcibly removed from the court 
room. The fiery orator Muishkin, before he was 
seized and choked into silence by the guards, 
shouted passionately, ^^This court is worse than a 
house of ill fame. There women prostitute them- 
selves from necessity ; but here senators sell their 
honor, prostitute justice, and sacrifice the lives 
of others, for the sake of rank and reward." ^ 

When Volkhovsky was called upon to plead, he 
arose in the dense throng of prisoners, and ad- 
dressing the presiding judge respectfully, said: 
"Will not Your High Excellency allow me to 
come and stand directly in front of the bench ? I 
am partially deaf, and I cannot hear, at this dis- 
tance, the questions that may be put to me." As 

8 Muishkin's speech is given in full in Bazilevski's "Po- 
litical Crime in Russia," vol. 3, p. 296. He was condemned 
to penal servitude for life, and after five years of imprison- 
ment, at first in Siberia and afterward in the fortress of 
Schlusselburg, he committed suicide, in 1882, by striking 
the prison surgeon, in order that he might be shot. He had 
nothing against the man whom he attacked; but he sought 
death, and the surgeon was the only ofiicial of rank to whom 
he could get access. (Article "Muishkin" in the Russian 
encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron, supplementary vol. 2, 
p. 226.)— G. K. 

153 



"A HEAKT FOR EVERY FATE" 

Volkhovsky was almost the first of tlie accused to 
address the court with the forms of courtesy, the 
presiding judge treated him with exceptional con- 
sideration and immediately granted his request. 
When asked for his name and plea, Volkhovsky 
said: 

"Your High Excellency and Senators: My 
name is Felix Vadimovitch Volkhovsky. I am 
only thirty years of age. I have spent six years 
in solitary confinement in a casemate of the fort- 
ress. My health is shattered ; my hair is turning 
gray ; I am partially deaf ; I have almost forgot- 
ten how to talk; and my wife is dying alone in 
Sicily.'^ 

Here Volkhovsky's feeble voice broke a little, 
and he seemed to totter on his feet, as if he were 
about to fall. The presiding judge ordered that 
a chair and a glass of water be brought to him. 
Volkhovsky drank a little of the water, but de- 
clined to take the seat. After a moment he re- 
covered himself and in a stronger voice and with 
bolder demeanor said: "Notwithstanding all 
these circumstances, which are, perhaps, of a 
purely personal nature, I should play a cowardly 
part, and should be false to my convictions and 
unfaithful to the people whom I have tried to 
help, if I did not join my comrades in protesting 

154 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 

against a ruling which denies us a public trial; 
segregates us in groups, prevents us from hearing 
one another's statements ; and deprives us of the 
most important of our legal rights. I refuse to 
take any part in such a trial, and I decline to 
plead. I will not give expression to my feeling 
for this court, but it is anything you like except 
respect." ^ 

At this point, Volkhovsky was stopped by the 
presiding judge and was ordered to take his seat. 
Not wishing to be subjected to personal violence 
he obeyed. 

It is not necessary, so far as the story of 
Volkhovsky's life is concerned, to give an ex- 
tended account of the "trial of the 193." It 
lasted from the 30th of October, 1877, to the 4th 
of February, 1878, and ended in the acquittal of 
ninety of the prisoners and the condemnation of 
one hundred and three. Of the latter, four were 
sentenced to penal servitude for life ; twenty -five 
to incarceration in fortresses, with or without 
hard labor; and seventy-four to confinement in 
prisons of the ordinary type, or to exile in Siberia 

9 Volkhovsky's speech is summarized in Bazilevski's "Po- 
litical Crime in Russia" (Paris, 1895), vol. 3, "The Trial of 
the 193," pp. 274-276. The more personal part, here given, 
is from the recollection of one of his comrades. — G. K. 

155 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'' 

for terms ranging from eighteen months to 
life.^^ 

About the time that Volkhovsky's wife died in 
Sicily, he himself was sentenced to "domestica- 
tion" [na zheetyo] in the west Siberian province 
of Tobolsk. The place of residence assigned him 
was Tiukalinsk, a small provincial town of four 
or loYe hundred log houses, which, at that time, 
had a population of perhaps three thousand. 
There he lived, under police surveillance, for five 
years; supporting himself by house-painting, 
sign-painting, book-binding, and other handi- 
crafts, which he was compelled to learn. In 
Tiukalinsk, his aged mother, who had gone with 

10 Among the accused found guilty were two who have 
since visited the United States. Egor Lazaref made his es- 
cape, and lived for a time in Denver, Colorado; and Ma- 
dame Breshkovskaya, who is now in prison in Irkutsk, spent 
several months in New York and Boston in 1904 or 1905, 
and made there many warm friends. 

Although Alexander II was generally regarded, in western 
Europe and America, as a just and humane man, he not only 
disapproved the court's merciful recommendations, in the 
cases of many of the condemned, but, at the suggestion of 
General Mezentsef, exiled to Siberia by administrative 
process eighty of the prisoners whom the court had acquit- 
ted. It is perhaps a significant fact that the chief of gen- 
darmes who made this suggestion, and the Czar who acted 
upon it, were both assassinated within the next three years. 
("Political Crime in Russia," by B. Bazilevski, Paris, 1885; 
vol. 3, p. 331.)— G. K. 

156 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 

Mm into exile, died, and there, two or three years 
later, he married again. His second wife, Alex- 
andra Sergeevna Volkhovskaya, whom I remem- 
ber as a pale, delicate, sad-faced woman, twenty- 
five or thirty years of age, had also been exiled 
for political reasons, and was living in Siberia 
alone. 

In 1883, Volkhovsky was transferred to the 
city of Tomsk, where he found congenial employ- 
ment in the editorial office of the Siberian 
Gazette. When I bade him good-by there, in the 
spring of 1886, he and his wife had three children 
and seemed comparatively happy ; but Fate never 
spared Volkhovsky long. A little more than a 
year after my return to the United States, he 
wrote me a profoundly sad and touching letter, 
in which he informed me of the death of his wife 
by suicide. He himself had been thrown out of 
employment by the suspension of the liberal 
Tomsk newspaper, the Siberian Gazette; and his 
wife had tried to help him support their family of 
young children by giving private lessons and by 
taking in sewing. Anxiety and overwork had 
finally broken down her health ; she had become 
an invalid, and in a morbid state of mind, brought 
on by unhappiness and disease, she reasoned her- 
self into the belief that she was an incumbrance, 

157 



"A HEAET FOR EVEEY FATE'' 

rather than a help, to her husband and her chil- 
dren, and that they would ultimately be better 
off if she were dead. On the 7th of December, 
1887, she put an end to her unhappy life by shoot- 
ing herself through the head with a pistol. Her 
husband was devotedly attached to her, and her 
death, under such circumstances and in such a 
way, was a terrible blow to him. In his letter to 
me he referred to a copy of James Russell 
Lowell's poems that I had caused to be sent to 
him, and said that in reading ^'After the Burial," 
he vividly realized, for the first time, that the 
lines, although written by a bereaved American, 
expressed the deepest thoughts and feelings of a 
bereaved Russian. 

By means of secret prearranged addresses in 
Russia and in the United States, I succeeded in 
maintaining a desultory and precarious corre- 
spondence with Volkhovsky until 1889. In the 
spring of that year I received from him two short 
letters filled with tidings of misfortune, and 
then — nothing more. The two letters were, in 
part, as follows : 

"Tomsk, February 14, 1889. 
"I write you a few lines to tell you how weary 
I am of waiting for a letter from you ! You have 

158 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'^ 

probably heard before this time of the final sup- 
pression of the Siberian Gazette, It is hard and 
it is shameful ! You need not hesitate any longer 
to write whatever you like about it for publica- 
tion. You will not injure the paper because 
there is no hope of its resurrection. 

"My youngest daughter is still sick and has 
grown so thin that it is painful to look at her. 
She sleeps badly and often I have to be up all 
night taking care of her. This, together with 
constant fear for her life, disorders my nerves 
terribly, and undermines what health I have left. 
I am greatly disheartened, too, by loneliness, not- 
withstanding my children and my friends. The 
affectionate tenderness of a beloved wife is a 
thing that some natures find it difficult to do 
without, no matter what else they may have. It 
is very hard, sometimes, my dear fellow, to live 
in this world ! 

"Since it became apparent that I should no 
longer be able to support myself by newspaper 
work (on account of the suppression of the ^i- 
herian Gazette) I have been looking for some 
other occupation or place; but, unfortunately, 
the present governor is expelling political exiles 
from all public positions, and even debarring 
them, to some extent, from private employment, 

159 



^^A HEAKT FOE EVERY FATE" 

by showing such hostility to them that private 
individuals dare not give them work for fear of 
getting into trouble. I do not know how it will 
all end. I have sent four manuscripts to St. 
Petersburg, but none of them has been published. 
With most cordial remembrances to your wife, 
I am 

"Yours, 

"Felix." 

"Irkutsk, Eastern Siberia, May 7, 1889. 
"How long it is since I last received a letter 
from you, and how much I have needed your let- 
ters ! They bring to me all the mental refresh- 
ment and all the gladness that life has for me, 
and at times I am sorely in need of them. Fate 
has dealt me another blow. My youngest daugh- 
ter Katie died a month or two since of pneu- 
monia. She had an attack of bronchitis winter 
before last which developed into chronic inflam- 
mation of the lungs ; but in the spring of 1888 I 
took her into the country, where she grew better 
and began to run about and play. Unfortu- 
nately, however, she was exposed there to whoop- 
ing cough, took the infection, and it ended in 
acute pneumonia and death. She was about 
three years old, and such a dear, lovable child! 

160 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 

But whose child is not dear and lovable? At 
any rate — 

"No, I can't write any more about it. This is 
the second time within a few days that I have 
tried to write you of her — but I cannot — it hurts 
too much ! As long as I am busy and can talk or 
write of other things, it seems as if the wound 
were healed ; but let my thoughts once go to her, 
and I feel such grief and pain that I don't know 
what to do with myself. 

"I must explain to you how I happen to be in 
Irkutsk. It is a very simple story. Thanks to 
the recommendation of some of my Irkutsk 
friends I was offered here a place that was suited 
to my tastes and abilities, and I hastened to 
migrate. ^^ 

"My warmest regards to your wife! Write 
me! 

"Affectionately, 

"Felix." 

11 When political offenders sentenced merely to "domesti- 
cation" have been ten years in exile, and have behaved dur- 
ing that time in a manner satisfactory to the authorities, it 
is customary to give them more freedom of movement. 
They are still kept under police surveillance, but are al- 
lowed to go anywhere within the limits of certain provinces. 
After sixteen years of imprisonment and exile, Volkhovsky 
received a "ticket of leave," which is colloquially known in 
the exile world as "a wolf's passport" — G. K. 

161 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 

After the receipt of the above letter, I wrote 
Volkhovsky twice, but I heard from him no more, 
and did not know, until long afterward, what 
happened to him. When his last letter was writ- 
ten, he was living with his little daughter Vera in 
Irkutsk, and was trying, by means of hard work, 
to lighten the sense of loneliness and bereave- 
ment that he had felt since the death of his wife, 
his daughter Katie, and his baby boy. Hardly 
had life begun to seem once more bearable, when 
there came upon him a new misfortune in the 
shape of an order from the governor general 
directing the private bank where he was em- 
ployed to dismiss him. He had committed no 
new offense, and there was no reason, so far as 
he was aware, for this arbitrary and imperative 
order ; but General Ignatief seemed to be of opin- 
ion that the employment of a political exile in a 
bank was "prejudicial to public order," and 
Volkhovsky had to move on. The bank made 
him a present of two hundred dollars, as an evi- 
dence of their sympathy and regard, and leaving 
his little daughter Vera with friends in Irkutsk, 
he proceeded to Troitskosavsk, a small town on 
the frontier of Mongolia, where one of his fellow- 
prisoners in the trial of the 193 had for some time 
been living. The police there, however, had been 

162 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'^ 

apprised of his dismissal from the Irkutsk bank 
by order of the governor general, and assuming 
of course that he must be a dangerous or trouble- 
some man, they made life so uncomfortable for 
him that he finally resolved to abandon, tempo- 
rarily, his daughter Vera, whom he had left in 
Irkutsk, and make his escape, if possible, to the 
United States by way of the Pacific Ocean. He 
had the money given to him by the bank, and a 
little more derived from the sale of a small 
volume of poems that he had published before 
leaving Tomsk ^^ and if his small capital should 
be exhausted before he reached his destination, 
he determined to work as a stevedore, or a com- 
mon laborer of some sort, until he should earn 
enough to go on. His objective point was the 
city of Washington, where he expected to find 
me. The nearest seaport on the Pacific where he 
could hope to get on board a foreign steamer was 
Vladivostok, about twenty-six hundred miles 
away. The distance to be traversed, under the 
eyes of a suspicious and hostile police, was im- 
mense; but Volkhovsky was cautious, prudent, 
and experienced, and assuming the dress ordi- 
narily worn by retired army officers, he set out, 

12 "Siberian Echoes," by Ivan Bmt [a pen name], Mik- 
hailof & Makushin, Tomsk. 

163 



"A HEAKT FOR EVERY FATE" 

with ^^free horses'' for the head waters of the 
Amur River^ where he expected to get a steamer. 

I cannot go into the details of his difficult and 
perilous journey from Troitskosavsk to Stretinsk, 
from Stretinsk down the Amur by steamer to 
Khabarofka, and from Khabarofka up the Ussuri 
and across Lake Khanka to Vladivostok. It was 
a journey full of adventures and narrow escapes, 
and nothing but the coolness, courage, and good 
fortune of the fugitive carried him through in 
safety. For the first time in this story of Volk- 
hovsky's life, I have used above the words "good 
fortune.'' It came to him at last. The French 
have a proverb which declares "Qui ne se lasse 
pas lasse 1' adversite." [He who does not tire 
tires adversity.] In more than seventeen years 
of imprisonment and exile, Volkhovsky never lost 
his grip, or acknowledged himself beaten, and 
Fate at last relented. From the moment when 
he resolved to escape, everything that happened 
to him proved to be advantageous. 

There were four foreign steamers in the port of 
Vladivostok when he arrived there, and one of 
them, a coal steamer, was flying the flag of Great 
Britain. Volkhovsky went on board, ascertained 
that the steamer was bound for Japan, and asked 
the captain if he would take a passenger who had 

164 



"A HEART FOE EVERY FATE" 

neither passport nor official permission to leave 
the empire. The captain hesitated at first, but 
when Volkhovsky related his story, said that he 
was able and willing to pay for his passage, and 
exhibited my photograph and letters as proofs of 
his trustworthiness, the captain consented to 
take him. A hiding-place was soon found for 
him, and when the Russian officials came on 
board to clear the vessel, he was nowhere to be 
seen. A few hours later the steamer was at sea, 
and the escaping political exile, as he stood on 
the upper deck and watched the slow fading of 
the Siberian coast in the west, drew a long deep 
breath of relief, and turned his face, with reviv- 
ing hope, toward the land where a personal 
opinion concerning human affairs is not regarded 
as "prejudicial to public order," and where a 
man who tries to make the world better and hap- 
pier is not punished for it with six years of soli- 
tary confinement, eleven years of exile, and the 
loss of more than half his family. 

The destination of the coal steamer was 
Nagasaki; and when Volkhovsky arrived there, 
he happened, by the sheerest accident, to get into 
a hotel kept by a Russian. The proprietor, from 
the very first, seemed to regard him with sus- 
picion, and asked him so many searching per- 

165 



"A HEAKT FOR EVERY FATE" 

sonal questions that Volkhovsky became alarmed. 
Japan, at that time, surrendered escaping exiles 
from Siberia, and there was a Russian man-of- 
war in the harbor. In this emergency, expecting 
every hour to be arrested by the Japanese police, 
the fugitive went for advice and aid to the Amer- 
ican consulate. The consul listened to his story ; 
looked him over critically; read two or three of 
my letters ; and then said : "It is not the duty of 
an American consul to assist political exiles in 
escaping from Siberia; but your case appeals to 
me, and I will do what I can for you. If you are 
arrested, say that you are an American citizen 
and send for me.'' 

"But," objected Volkhovsky, "how can I say 
that I am an American citizen when I speak 
English so badly? They '11 see at once that I 'm 
a foreigner." 

"That does n't make any difference," replied 
the consul. "We 've got lots of citizens in the 
States who speak English worse than you do. 
Whatever happens, send for me ; I '11 explain 
your English. Meanwhile I '11 go back to your 
hotel with you, and to-morrow morning I '11 call 
for you to take a walk. You 're an intimate 
friend of mine — see?" 

By making opportunities to show himself pub- 

166 



"A HEAET FOE EVEEY FATE'' 

licly in the company of the fugitive, the consul 
allayed the suspicions of the hotel proprietor and 
the Eussian naval officers, and two or three days 
later Volkhovsky left Nagasaki for Yokohama. ^^ 
After having paid his steamer fare from Vlad- 
ivostok to Nagasaki, and from Nagasaki to Yo- 
kohama, Volkhovsky found himself in the latter 
place with hardly money enough to get across the 
Pacific and not half enough to reach Wash- 
ington. He made inquiries concerning vessels 
about to sail for the western coast of America, 
and found that the English steamer Batavia was 
on the point of clearing for Vancouver, British 
Columbia. Going at once on board, he asked the 
purser what the fare to Vancouver would be in 
the steerage. The officer looked at him for a 
moment, saw that, although a foreigner, he was 
unmistakably a gentleman, and then replied, 
bluntly but not unkindly : ^^My dear sir, you 
can't go in the steerage — it 's jammed full of 
Chinese emigrants. Nobody ever goes in the 
steerage except Chinamen ; it 's no place for 
you." 

13 It can do no harm now to say that the American con- 
sul in Nagasaki at that time was Mr. Birch, of Wheeling, 
West Virginia. I met him in the United States long after- 
ward and he described to me the extremely favorable im- 
pression that Volkhovsky made upon him.' — G. K. 

167 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 

"I must get to Vancouver," said Volkhovsky, 
"and I have very little money. The steerage will 
do. I have been in much worse places." 

"All right !" replied the purser, "I '11 sell you 
a steerage ticket, but you can't live three weeks 
with Chinese emigrants. When we get to sea, 
I '11 find a place for you somewhere." 

Until the Batavia had actually sailed and was 
out of the harbor, Volkhovsky did not dare to let 
the passengers, or even the officers of the steamer 
know who he really was and whence he had come. 
He believed that he had narrowly escaped detec- 
tion and capture in Nagasaki, and he did not 
intend to run any more risks that could be 
avoided. At last, however, when the Batavia 
was far at sea, and the coast of Japan had sunk 
beneath the rim of the western horizon, he told 
his story to the officers of the ship, and admitted 
to the passengers with whom he became ac- 
quainted that he was an escaped political exile 
from Siberia. The interest and sympathy ex- 
cited by his narrative deepened as the officers and 
passengers became better acquainted with him, 
and long before the Batavia reached Vancouver, 
he had so completely won the hearts of the whole 
ship's company that they took up a collection for 
the purpose of providing him with transportation 

168 



^^A HEAET FOR EVERY FATE'' 

from Vancouver to the city of Washington. To 
this collection every soul on board contributed, 
from the captain down to the steward, the cook, 
and the boy who cleaned the ship's lamps.^* 
When he left the steamer, he had money enough 
for a first class railway ticket to Washington and 
sixty Mexican silver dollars for incidental ex- 
penses. My first knowledge of Volkhovsky's 
escape came to me in a letter addressed in his 
familiar handwriting and post-marked "Van- 
couver." Wondering how an exile in eastern 
Siberia could possibly have mailed a letter — or 
had it mailed — ^in British Columbia, I tore open 
the envelope and read the first three lines. They 
were as follows : 

"My dear George Ivanovitch : At last I am 
free! I am writing this letter to you not from 
that land of exile, Siberia, but from free Amer- 
ica." 

If I had suddenly received a letter post-marked 
"Zanzibar," from a friend whom I believed to be 
dead and buried in Alaska, I could hardly have 

14 The steward became so much attached to Volkhovsky, 
in the course of the voyage, that long afterward, in Mon- 
treal, he came to call upon me for the purpose of making 
inquiries about him., — G. K. 

169 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 

been more astonished. Volkhovsky free and in 
British Columbia, within a few days' journey of 
New York! It seemed utterly incredible. At 
the time when this letter reached me, I was lec- 
turing six nights a week in New York and New 
England; but I telegraphed and wrote Volkhov- 
sky that I would meet him at the Delevan House 
in Albany on the morning of Sunday, December 
8th. I spoke Saturday night in Utica, took the 
night express for Albany, and reached the Del- 
evan House about two o'clock. Volkhovsky had 
not yet arrived, and as it was uncertain when he 
would come I went to bed. Early in the morn- 
ing, a bell-boy knocked loudly at my door and 
handed me a slip of paper upon which, in Volk- 
hovsky's handwriting, were the words, "My dear 
fellow, I am here." 

If any of the guests of the Delevan House hap- 
pened to be passing through that corridor on 
their way to breakfast, they must have been sur- 
prised to see, at the door of No. 90, a man with 
disheveled hair and nothing on but his night- 
shirt locked in the embrace of a traveler who had 
not had time to remove his Pacific-coast sombrero 
and heavy winter overcoat. 

Volkhovsky was in better health than I had ex- 
pected to see him, but his face was worn and hag- 

170 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'' 

gard, and at times tliere was a peculiar anxious, 
hunted expression in Ms eyes wMch showed that 
he had recently been under great mental and 
emotional strain. Almost the first thing he said 
to me was: "George Ivanovitch, I am forty 
years of age. I have lost all my family except 
my little daughter Vera, whom I have left in 
eastern Siberia. I'm afraid that the govern- 
ment, when it learns of my escape, will do some- 
thing with her — perhaps put her in an asylum 
where I can never see her again. If I can only 
recover her, I may have strength, even at my age 
and in my broken health, to begin a new life in a 
new and strange country ; but if I lose her, I may 
as well lie down and die." 

"We '11 get your daughter," I said, "if I have 
to go to Siberia myself, on a false passport, and 
kidnap her." 

We knew a lady in St. Petersburg who could 
be trusted to manage the little girl's escape, but 
she was a political suspect and it might not be 
safe to send the necessary money to her directly. 
I therefore wrote to a friend in one of the foreign 
legations in the Russian capital, explained to him 
the circumstances of the case, and asked him: 
"Will you cash a bank draft for eight hundred 
rubles, if I send you one, and give the money, in 

171 



"A HEART FOE EVERY FATE" 

Russian notes, to a lady who will call at tlie lega- 
tion and present my card. You are not to know 
who she is, and you are not to ask her any ques- 
tions. If she presents my card, she is to have the 
cash." This letter I sent to the Foreign Office of 
the country that my friend's legation repre- 
sented, with a request that it be forwarded. In 
due course of time, I received a reply in which 
the attache said that while it was not a part of 
his duty to facilitate the escape of exiles — young 
or old — from Siberia, he could not see that even 
the Russian Government would be injured by 
the return of a nine-year-old girl to her father, 
and that he would therefore receive and deliver 
the money as requested. ^^But my dear Mr. 
Kennan," he added, "did you suppose that by 
sending your letter to our Foreign Office you 
could prevent inspection of it by the Russian 
cabinet noirf Our official letters are often 
opened, although, so far as I can judge, this par- 
ticular one has escaped." 

The money reached its destination safely and 
was forwarded to Irkutsk. There Volkhovsky's 
friends cut o& the little girl's hair ; clothed her 
in the dress of a boy, and sent her, in care of 
a trustworthy attendant, to St. Petersburg. 
There was no trans-continental Siberian railway 

172 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 

at that time, and Vera and her companion made 
the journey of nearly four thousand miles with 
relays of post horses. In St. Petersburg, her 
friends and the sympathetic attache committed 
her to the care of a German gentleman, who hap- 
pened to be traveling in Russia with his family, 
and he and his wife undertook to get her across 
the frontier and take her to London. In the 
early part of 1890, Volkhovsky went to England 
to meet her, and in June I received a cable from 
him saying, "Hurrah ! My child has arrived.'' 

In a letter, written about a year later, to a 
friend in the United States, Hesba Stretton, the 
well known English novelist, referred to Volkhov- 
sky and his daughter as follows : 

"Volkhovsky, who escaped from Siberia rather 
more than a year ago, has been lecturing in Eng- 
land all winter. He has a charming little daugh- 
ter ten years old who was born in exile. She 
has been staying for a fortnight with my mar- 
ried sister and her two daughters, and they are 
quite delighted with her; she is so original and 
affectionate, and she has had so much tragedy in 
her short life, which she speaks of now and then 
as If horrors were a natural part of existence 
to her. She was brought through Russia and 
Siberia disguised as a boy. We hope to wean her 

173 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 

thoughts from these terrible subjects and give 
her something of the ordinary joys of girlhood. 
But her destiny must be a sad one, for she will 
surely (and quite rightly) throw in her lot with 
the revolutionists of Russia, and unless the revo- 
lution comes soon, our little Vera will spend 
much of her life in prison and in exile. She was 
showing Annie how the orthodox Russians hold 
their thumb and two fingers pressed together to 
represent the Trinity during their worship, and 
then she said : ^But God does n't mind how we 
hold our fingers, does he?' She was moaning in 
her sleep one night, and when Daisy woke her she 
said: ^I dreamed there were spies in the room, 
and I pretended to be asleep until they went to 
sleep, and then I got up and crept to the cot 
where my baby brother was. I said: "Hush! 
don't make a noise, for there are spies in the 
room," and I took him up and went to the door, 
watching the spies all the time ; and I opened the 
door and there were some men hung up, and my 
father's head lay on the ground and his body was 
a little way off covered with a white cloth.' 
Think of that for the dream of a child of ten 
years !" 

Volkhovsky soon established himself in Eng- 
land, and encouraged by the recovery of his 

174 



/ 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 

daughter, and sustained by the influences of a 
favorable and friendly environment, he regained, 
in great measure, his health and strength. He 
became the editor of Free Russia^ the paper 
established in London by the Friends of Russian 
Freedom; wrote articles for the Contemporary , 
National y and other English reviews ; lectured on 
Russian subjects in all parts of Great Britain; 
and lived, generally, a happy and useful life. 
His daughter Vera grew up to young womanhood 
in England ; was educated in Girton College ; and 
when I saw her last, about three years ago, she 
was teaching in Dumferline, Scotland. 

Upon the outbreak of the revolution in Russia, 
in 1905, Volkhovsky, then fifty -eight years of age, 
returned to the country where he had experi- 
enced so much sorrow and suffering, and again 
took up the fight for freedom by establishing and 
editing a liberal newspaper in Finland. The 
revolutionary movement, however, failed, and he 
was forced, much against his will, to return to 
England. ^^I would have stayed with my com- 
rades," he afterward said to me, "and would have 
fought it through to the end, if I had been well 
enough; but I can no longer endure a term of 
fortress imprisonment, and my death in a case- 
mate would not have helped my country." 

175 



"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE 

Volkhovsky has not lived, and probably will 
not live, to see Russia free; but Ms life has not 
been a failure. A greater poet than he, but not, 
perhaps, a braver man, said, before he perished at 
Missolonghi in the struggle for Greek inde- 
pendence : 

^'They never fail who fight in a great cause." ^^ 

15 Byron, in "Marino Faliero." 



176 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 



VII 
"THE WOKLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

ONE hot sunny forenoon in July, as I sat in 
a front room of the Hotel d^Angleterre in 
St. Petersburg, reading the morning paper, 
Maxim, the uniformed messenger of the Ameri- 
can legation, appeared at my door and said : 

"His Excellency, the Minister, directs me to 
Inform you that there is a package in the post- 
office for you, from Siberia, addressed in care of 
the legation. The police say that it must be 
opened and examined before it is delivered. Do 
you wish to be present at the examination, or 
would you prefer to have His Excellency send 
some one from the legation to represent you?" 

I hardly knew what reply to make. Impulse 
prompted me to go to the postoffice myself, but 
Siberian experience had taught me caution, and, 
after a moment's reflection, I decided not to put 
myself in a position where I might be questioned 

179 



^^THE WOELD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

by the police witli regard to a package of whose 
contents I was ignorant. Nearly all of my 
friends and acquaintances in Siberia were polit- 
ical exiles or convicts, and they might have sent 
me almost anything, from a collection of pressed 
flowers to a revolutionary manuscript. 

"Tell His Excellency/' I said to the messenger, 
"that if he can send some one from the legation 
to get the package I shall be greatly obliged." 

An hour or two later, Maxim again appeared, 
bringing in his arms a good-sized roll, or bundle, 
which had been sewn up in coarse linen, sealed 
with red wax, and addressed to me, in English 
as well as in Russian, with a broad-pointed pen. 
The covering had been slit with a knife, and 
through the opening I could see a wad of cheap 
cotton cloth which had apparently been stuffed 
back into the package without much care after 
the examination. 

"What is it?" I asked the messenger. 

"God knows!" he rej^lied piously. "It looks 
like one of my wife's old dresses." 

Turning back the coarse linen wrapper, I took 
out a roll which seemed to be made up of strips 
of dirty, smoke-stained calico, twelve or fourteen 
inches in width. There were a dozen or more of 
these strips, and their aggregate length must 

180 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

have been at least a hundred feet. The pattern 
of the cloth was Asiatic, and I remembered hav- 
ing seen material of the same kind used as a 
lining for Kirghis tents in the mountains of the 
Altai. But why should any one mail to me the 
torn-up and smoky lining of a Kirghis kibitka? 
Intrinsically, it was not worth the postage paid 
on it, and it did not seem to be the sort of thing 
that any of my Siberian friends would be likely 
to send me as a curiosity. Until I unrolled the 
last strip, I half expected to find something in 
the center; but there was nothing. Turning 
again to the wrapper, I examined the address; 
but it had been written in a careful copy-book 
hand, which was as legible as print, but which 
had no peculiarity that made it recognizable. 
The postmark was so blurred that I could not 
read it, and the seals bore the impress of a Turk- 
ish or Tatar coin. Neither inside nor outside 
the package was there anything to show where it 
had come from or who had sent it. Again I went 
over the strips, shook them out, and piled them 
one by one in a heap. Nothing in the shape of 
a clue appeared. The secret of the package — if 
it had a secret — ^^^as undiscoverable. But it 
must have a secret ! No one that I knew in Si- 
beria was likely to suppose that I would be inter- 

181 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

estecl in an old Kirghis tent lining. It must 
either contain something or mean something. 
Could there be wiiting on the cloth? Seating 
myself with crossed legs on the floor, I went over 
the strips, one by one and foot by foot, with 
microscopic closeness of examination. This 
time my search was rewarded. One of the last 
strips that I overhauled seemed to be a little 
thicker than the others, and upon feeling it care- 
fully and holding it up to the light, I found that 
it was double, the edges of two strips having been 
lightly basted together with thread that corre- 
sponded exactly in color with the material. Be- 
tween these strips, for a distance of ten or fifteen 
feet, had been placed large sheets of very soft 
and thin paper, closely covered with writing on 
both sides. The language of the manuscript was 
Russian; but inclosed in quotation marks, at 
the head of the first sheet, was the following line 
in English : 

"The World of a Single Cell." 

Although the document bore neither date nor 
signature, I guessed in a moment what its nature 
was and who had sent it to me, because I remem- 
bered very well when and where I had heard the 
play upon words contained in the title. 

182 



^^THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

In the summer of the previous year, I had met 
in the mountains of the Altai a young Russian 
journalist named Eugene Voronin, who had been 
banished to that part of Siberia for connection 
with some political affair whose precise nature 
I did not learn. He was a young man — perhaps 
twenty-eight years of age — with blue eyes, fairly 
regular features of the Scandinavian type, a 
small mustache curling up a little at the ends, 
and closely cut, chestnut-brown hair which grew 
so thickly that when he ran his fingers through 
it, as he frequently did in animated conversation, 
it stood vigorously on end and seemed to give ad- 
ditional energy and alertness to his resolute, 
virile face. He impressed me as a man of un- 
usual ability and character, and in describing to 
me his Siberian experience, he showed not only 
skill in narration, but discriminating intelligence 
in the selection of facts and incidents that were 
particularly instructive or telling. Our talk, in 
the single evening that I spent at his house, re- 
lated chiefly to the conditions of political exile in 
the province of Semipalatinsk ; but at a late hour 
of the night the conversation drifted to prisons, 
and he began to describe to me his life in one of 
the bomb-proof casemates of the Petropavlovski 
fortress. The few facts that he had time to 

183 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

give me were so novel and interesting that when 
I bade him good-by I said: "Why can't you 
write all that out for me and send it to me? I 
am going away to-morrow^ and this may be my 
last talk with you; but I shall get back to St. 
Petersburg next summer, and before that time 
you may think of some way of communicating 
with me safely, or may have a chance to send a 
letter by some one whom you can trust. The 
American legation will always know where I 
am. What I should like particularly is a de- 
scription of your prison experience on its per- 
sonal side. Tell me what you did from day to 
day, what impressions were made upon you, and 
what effect solitary confinement had upon your 
mind and character.'' 

"The biggest thing of my life happened to me 
in the fortress," said Voronin, "but it is very 
personal ; do you want that?" 

"Certainly!" I replied. "Probably it is the 
very thing I do want. Don't be afraid to write 
about yourself. If a man ever has an excuse for 
egotism, it is when he is shut up alone in a bomb- 
proof casemate. He is then the only possible 
hero of his story, because he is the only inhab- 
itant of his world." 

"All right !" said Voronin, with a quick bright 

184 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

smile, "I '11 call my recollections ^The Egotistic 
Story of an Altruist in a World of a Single Cell' ; 
but don't count too much on it. The police are 
likely to take an interest in your Siberian corre- 
spondence, and they may confiscate it. How- 
ever, I '11 get it through to you safely if I can. 
Good-by ! Good luck !" 

The young journalist and I never met again; 
but he did not forget his promise, and twelve 
months after I bade him good-by in the Siberian 
village of Ulbinsk, he not only sent me the story 
of his fortress experience, but concealed it so skil- 
fully in an old Kirghis tent lining that it escaped 
the vigilance of the most experienced police in 
Europe, and very nearly escaped mine. The 
manuscript read as follows : 

"The World op a Single Cell." 

i. the checkerboard square 

When I last saw you, nearly a year ago, you 
asked me to write out for you the story of my life 
in the fortress of Petropavlovsk. Before this 
manuscript reaches you, you will probably have 
heard a dozen such stories, from men who are 
better qualified to describe prison life than I am ; 
but all political offenders do not have the same 

185 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

experience, even in the same environment, and it 
is possible that my life differed from that of 
other prisoners, even in so limited a world as 
that of a single cell. At any rate, you wanted 
me to tell you what I saw, what I did, and what 
happened to me, in the fortress, and it is an epi- 
sode in my personal life that I shall try to give 
you. In thinking it over, it seems to me that I 
shall have to begin with the checkerboard square, 
because on that hangs all the story there is to 
tell. 

When I was arrested, about two o'clock on a 
warm still night in June, I was taken by two 
gendarmes, in a closed carriage, to the Litovski 
Zamok, an old prison in St. Petersburg which, in 
the course of your investigations, you may have 
visited. After I had been searched, and after 
my name, age, occupation, and other biograph- 
ical data had been recorded in the prison regis- 
ter, I was conducted to a fairly large but gloomy 
cell in the second story, where I was locked up 
and left to my own devices. Nothing of im- 
portance happened, so far as this story is con- 
cerned, until the next forenoon, when, as I stood 
at the grated window, looking out into the court- 
yard, my attention was attracted by a low tap- 
ping on the wall that separated me from the next 

186 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

cell. I had heard, of course, of the knock alpha- 
bet, and knew that criminals in our prisons were 
accustomed to communicate with one another 
in this way; but I was wholly ignorant of the 
code, and did not even know on what principle it 
was based. All that I could do, therefore, was 
to rap three or four times on my side of the wall, 
in friendly response to my unseen neighbor's 
greeting. But this did not seem to satisfy him. 
After waiting a moment, as if in expectation of 
something further, he began another series of 
knocks, which lasted for two or three minutes, 
but which had no more significance for me than 
the tapping of a woodpecker. I was sorry that I 
had never taken the trouble to find out something 
about the knock alphabet, but as there seemed to 
be little use in exchanging signals that had no 
meaning on either side of the wall, I finally gave 
it up, went back to the window, and became ab- 
sorbed again in my own gloomy thoughts. But 
the knocking continued at intervals throughout 
the forenoon, and every time I became conscious 
of my environment I heard the soft tap-tap-tap- 
ping of the unseen hand in the other cell. Just 
before the time for the midday meal it ceased; 
but after the turnkey had brought me my dinner 
and retired, it began again, and continued, hour 

187 



"THE WOELD OF A SINGLE CELU' 

after hour, until I was finally forced into making 
an effort, at least, to understand it. The thing 
was getting on my neryes, and besides that, my 
neighbor might have something important to tell 
me. 

As soon as I began to listen to the knocks at- 
tentively, I noticed that they were segregated in 
spaced groups, and the thought occurred to me 
that perhaps the number of knocks in a group 
was the serial number of a letter in the alphabet, 
one knock standing for "a,'' two for "b,'' three 
for "c," and so on. That would be the simplest 
possible form of knock alphabet, and the one that 
a prisoner would naturally think of first. As 
soon as I tested this conjecture, I found myself 
on the right track. I was not used to thinking 
by arithmetic, and had to go over the alphabet a 
dozen times before I could remember what the 
serial numbers of the letters were, but as my 
neighbor confined himself to a single word, and 
patiently repeated that word again and again, I 
finally figured it out. Numerically it was 21-14- 
4-5-18-19-20-1-14-4 ; alphabetically it proved to be 
u-n-d-e-r-s-t-a-n-d. ^ 

All day long, the prisoner in the other cell had 

1 For the sake of clearness, I have substituted the English 
for the Russian alphabet. — G. K. 

188 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

been knocking out, "Understand? Understand? 
Understand?'' making more than a liundred 
knocks for every repetition of the word. He 
must have thought, before he got an intelligent 
response, that there was either great indifference 
or extraordinary stupidity on my side of the 
wall ; but he probably knew that he was dealing 
with a novice and that he must have patience. 
As soon as I grasped the significance of the nu- 
merical inquiry, I responded eagerly "25-5-19" 
[Y-e-s]. He then knocked out slowly and care- 
fully : "Learn better way ; listen !" In the still- 
ness of the prison, I could hear his actions, al- 
most as perfectly as I could have seen them if 
the wall had been transparent. With some hard 
object in his hand, he gave the wall one emphatic 
rap, and then scratched a long horizontal line 
across it, as high up as he could reach. This was 
followed by two raps and the scratching of a 
second line, about a foot below the first. One 
after another, he drew in this way seven hori- 
zontal lines, six or eight feet long and twelve or 
fourteen inches apart, numbering them from one 
to seven, by means of raps, as he drew them. He 
then scratched six perpendicular lines across the 
first series, giving to each its number, from left 
to right, in the same way. The whole diagram, 

189 



"THE WOELD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

when finished, presented itself to my imagination 
as a huge vertical checkerboard, with numbered 
rows and columns. I had never before had occa- 
sion to see with my ears, but I found it quite pos- 
sible to do so, and I have no doubt that by 
making proper use of a scratcher and the knock 
alphabet, a mathematician might give a lesson in 
plane geometry through a ten-inch wall. 

As soon as my instructor completed his invis- 
ible but audible checkerboard, he rapped out the 
words : "Put alphabet in squares." This I suc- 
ceeded in doing by scratching the diagram on the 
floor with a rusty nail which I found sticking in 
the wood-work behind the door. The man in the 
other cell then began knocking again, but instead 
of designating a letter by its serial number in the 
alphabet, he located it on the checkerboard 
square by giving the number of the row and the 
number of the column at whose intersection it 
would be found. I don't know who originally 
invented this device, but it reduces by at least 
seventy per cent, the number of knocks required. 
To make the vowel "u" by the first method one 
must knock twenty-one times, but the same letter 
may be indicated on the checkerboard square 
with six knocks. In learning this code, the be- 
ginner must have the diagram before him, be- 

190 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

cause he has to refer to it constantly ; but after 
he has memorized the numerical values of the 
letters, he can dispense with it altogether, be- 
cause he no longer needs its guidance. Every 
group of knocks then has its alphabetical equiv- 
alent in his brain, and the translation is made 
almost without conscious effort. After a few 
days' practice one can easily knock out from 
eight to twelve words a minute, and this rate of 
speed may be greatly increased by abbreviations 
in spelling. 

The first question asked by my instructor, after 
I had learned the square, was "Who are 
you?" 

I gave my name. 

"From the gentry?" 

"Yes." 

"I thought so; all of our brothers" [i. e. all of 
our kind] "know the square. Rapping to you 
was like offering nuts to a toothless squirrel. I 
thought you 'd never twig. What are you in 
for?" 

"Probably for something I 've written. I 'm a 
political." 

"Ah ! I know your kind. They 're not a bad 
sort, but they all write too much. There were 
two politicals in my party when I went to Si- 

191 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

beria, and one of them was a writer. In our 
motherland writing is risky business. Your 
tongue will take you to Kiev, but your pen will 
take you to Sehlusselburg," ^ 

"Who are you?" I inquired in turn. 

"Ivan Bezrodni" [Ivan Nameless], he replied.^ 

"A hrodyagy then?'' [A tramp.] 

"Precisely that ! The forest is my mother and 
the jail my father." 

"Have you been in prison long?" 

"Not long here, but many times in other 
places ; I 'm a runaway convict. Is this your 
first imprisonment?" 

"The very first," I replied. 

"Then I can teach you many useful things. 
I 'm only a muzhik — educated with copper 
money — but I know jails as the tongue knows the 
mouth." 

My fellow prisoner did not overestimate his 
capabilities as an instructor. In the course of 

2 Kiev Is a place of old and holy churches to which thou- 
sands of pilgrims go ; Schlusselburg is a fortress near St. 
Petersburg to which political offenders are sent. — G. K. 

3 Common criminals who escape from prison or exile and 
become tramps usually call themselves "Ivan Nameless," or 
"Ivan Dontremember," when they are rearrested, hoping 
thus to conceal their identities and their records. Hundreds 
of these "Ivans" are registered in the books of the police 
every year. They are known as "brodyags." — G. K. 

192 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'^ 

the next two weeks we became fairly intimate, 
and when I had gained his confidence, he did not 
hesitate to share with me the extraordinary fund 
of knowledge and experience that he had ac- 
quired in perhaps a hundred different jails, 
ostrogs, forwarding prisons and etapes. He 
taught me three or four ingenious ciphers; de- 
scribed to me methods of intercommunication 
between cells by means of ovens, gas fixtures, 
bread pills, pendulums, and the New Testament ; 
told me how to hide small objects so that the 
turnkeys would not find them in a search; and 
impressed upon my mind the importance, in 
prison life, of the apparently insignificant things 
that a man may find and pick up in the courtyard 
when he is taken out for his walk, such as but- 
tons, pins, old nails, bits of string, pieces of glass, 
and even half burnt matches and ends of ciga- 
rettes. "You can't rap long nor make a clear 
sound," he said, "with your knuckles. You must 
have a knocker, and a button or a nail is good. 
Hide it in the hot-air hole of your stove, or keep 
it in your mouth when you 're searched. With a 
pin, or the burnt end of a match, and a scrap of 
cigarette paper you 've got writing materials. 
Hide them in the toe of your shoe. Look every- 
where, notice everything, save everything, and 

193 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

listen for all noises. If there 's a Bible in your 
cell, look for pin holes in the leaves." 

In short, my friend the hrodyag gave me a full 
course of instruction in the only branch of knowl- 
edge that is studied in our prisons, viz., the art 
of outwitting jailers. Nothing, however, that I 
learned from him was so useful to me as the 
checkerboard square. With a knowledge of that 
diagram and its manifold uses, a prisoner can 
seldom be wholly isolated, even in a bomb-proof 
casemate. He may be, as you said, "the only 
inhabitant of his world," but by means of the 
knock alphabet he can enter into mental and 
emotional relations with the inhabitants of other 
similar worlds around him, and may thus keep 
his faculties and sympathies alive through 
months, and even years, of solitude and loneli- 
ness. 

I was transferred to the fortress early in 
August. Two gendarmes came to my cell in the 
middle of the night, waked me, ordered me to 
dress, and then took me downstairs to a closed 
and curtained carriage which was waiting for us 
in the street. When I asked where we were go- 
ing, they replied, in the words that I was to hear 
so often in the months to come, "Prikazano ne 
govoreet." [The orders are not to talk.] I had 

194 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

little doubt that our destination was the fortress, 
and when, after we had crossed a long bridge and 
turned a corner, I heard the hollow echo of the 
horses' feet from the sides and roof of a vaulted 
passage, I knew that we were entering one of the 
courtyards of our dreaded political prison. In 
front of a sentinel-guarded door, the gendarmes 
turned me over to a warden and two soldiers, 
who took me through a long dimly lighted cor- 
ridor to my cell. After I had put on the fortress 
dress — coarse undershirt and drawers, felt slip- 
pers and a long loose khalat — the jailers retired 
and I was left alone to acquaint myself with my 
new and strange environment. Although I was 
young, strong, and temperamentally buoyant, the 
cell in which I found myself chilled me with fore- 
boding and dread. It was large and high, be- 
cause it had been built to hold a heavy cannon ; 
but the walls were black, cold and damp; the 
heavily grated window was eight feet or more 
above the floor ; and the gloominess and stillness 
suggested a burial vault, rather than a prison 
cell, or even a casemate. The only articles of 
furniture in the room were the ordinary Eussian 
stove of plastered brick ; a narrow iron bed, one 
end of which was fastened to the wall with bolts ; 
a shelf -like iron table, secured in the same way; 

195 



^THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'^ 

a wooden commode with a hinged door; and a 
wash-basin, into which the guard in the corridor 
could pour water through a tube. Light was 
furnished by a small kerosene lamp of brass, 
which my jailers had left on the table at the head 
of the bed when they retired. 

After examining carefully every object in the 
cell ( in accordance with the counsel of my friend 
the hrodyag) I listened attentively for some 
sound of human life or activity; but the silence 
was that of a sepulcher. Suddenly, I became 
conscious of two human eyes, staring at me from 
a narrow slit in the heavy plank door. As I took 
a step toward them, they vanished; and with a 
faint click the hinged cover of the peep-hole 
dropped into its place. The consciousness that 
disembodied, impersonal, but vigilant eyes were 
constantly watching me — as if I were an insect 
under a microscope — took away the only comfort 
there was in solitude. Aloneness I could en- 
dure; but secret, stealthy surveillance, in ad- 
dition to loneliness, was intolerable. "How- 
ever," I thought, "darkness will shelter me from 
that,'' and stepping to the table I blew out the 
light. In a few minutes the key grated in the 
rusty lock, the door opened, and a soldier entered 
with another lighted lamp. 

196 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

"Putting out the light is not allowed," he said, 
"and if you do it again, we '11 put you in a place 
where it will be dark all the time." I made no 
reply, but when he had gone I set the lamp on the 
floor, in the farthest corner of the cell, and threw 
myself on the bed. Slowly and mournfully, at 
the quarter hour, the bells in the spire of the for- 
tress cathedral chimed out the air of the liturgi- 
cal response : "Have mercy, O Lord !" 

I fell asleep at last, but the eyes at the slit of 
the "Judas" and the faint, far-away chiming of 
church melodies gave form and color to a vivid 
dream in which I imagined that I had fallen into 
a death-like trance and was about to be buried. 
The priest who was conducting the funeral serv- 
ice looked into my coffin through a slit in the lid 
and saw with comprehending eyes that I was 
alive ; but turning away indifferently he gave the 
signal for lowering my body into the grave, and 
then, seizing a handful of earth, he sprinkled it 
over me while he intoned in a deep bass voice: 
"The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, 
and the wide world and all that dwell therein." ^ 
With the sound of the sprinkled earth in my ears 

4 The equivalent, in the Russian service, of the words 
"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust" in the English 
Book of Common Prayer. — G. K. 

197 



^^THE WOKLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

I awoke. Tlie lamp was still burning, but the 
gray light of dawn was coming in through the 
high grated embrasure. 

My first day in the fortress was typical of in- 
numerable days to come. Three times, at inter- 
vals of four or five hours, a silent soldier handed 
food to me through a square port-hole in the 
heavy door. As knives and forks had been used 
by desperate or insane prisoners as a means of 
committing suicide, they were not furnished — at 
least not to me. Solids, such as bread and meat, 
were cut into slices or mouthfuls which could be 
eaten from the hand, and for soup and porridge 
there was provided a wooden spoon. Twice 
every hour, on an average, a turnkey in the corri- 
dor looked through the slit in the door to see 
what I was doing ; but as he was shod in felt slip- 
pers, there was no sound of footsteps to warn me 
of his approach. The grave-like stillness of the 
casemate was never broken save by the faint 
distant striking of the quarter hours in the belfry 
of the fortress cathedral, the firing of a heavy 
gun on the parapet at noon and the chiming of 
^^God Save the Czar,'' at midnight. All through 
the first day of my incarceration, I watched the 
narrow strip of sky that I could see through the 
high window, with the hope that the sun would 

198 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

cross it ; but it never did. The window opening 
was a tunnel through five feet of masonry and not 
a ray of sunshine could get into it. Late in the 
afternoon, there was a reflection from the high 
encircling wall of the courtyard, which bright- 
ened for a time the gloomy atmosphere of the 
cell; but it did not last long. During most of 
the day I sat in a gray twilight which was like 
that of a crypt. 

My first thought, after I became accustomed to 
my environment, was that of opening communi- 
cation, by means of the knock alphabet, with pos- 
sible neighbors in adjoining cells; but it was 
neither so safe nor so easy to do this in the 
fortress as it had been in the Litovski Zamok. 
There the walls were thin and the guards negli- 
gent or indifferent ; but liere there might be two 
feet of masonry between me and the occupant of 
the next cell, and the watchful eyes at the slit 
of the "Judas" made it dififlcult to knock without 
being seen. However, I determined to try. 
Seating myself near the head of the bed, I buried 
my face in my crossed arms on the little table, 
and, out of the corners of nearly closed eyes, 
watched the peep-hole in the door. Presently its 
hinged cover rose and the guard looked into the 
cell. Seeing nothing suspicious in my attitude, 

199 



"THE WOELD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

he closed the aperture and went on to another 
casemate, while I began knocking under cover of 
my knee. There was no response. After wait- 
ing a moment, I knocked again ; and then, laying 
my ear to the wall, listened with concentrated 
attention. All that I could hear was the beating 
of my heart. A dozen times that day, in the 
comparatively safe intervals between the visits 
of the guard to my door, I rapped first on one 
side wall and then on the other; but never was 
there an answering knock. Either the cells next 
to mine were unoccupied, or the occupants did 
not hear my signals. At the end of the third 
day, I became satisfied that I was absolutely 
isolated. The hrodyag in the Litovski Zamok 
had assured me, out of his wide experience, that 
intercommunication between cells was always 
possible, in one way or another ; but he had never 
been in the fortress. That labyrinth of stone- 
walled corridors and casemates was an exception 
to all prison rules and would have defied, per- 
haps, even his ingenuity and resourcefulness. I, 
certainly, could think of no possible way of con- 
necting my world with any other world. So far 
as social relations were concerned, I might as 
well have been shut up alone in a chamber of the 
catacombs, because the guard who handed me 

200 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

food through the twelve-inch port-hole would not 
talk, and the eyes which appeared every half 
hour at the "Judas" slit in the door never gave 
me a sense of human association, much less of 
sympathetic human companionship. 

It was the policy of the government, at that 
time, to shake the courage and break down the 
resolution of newly arrested political offenders 
by subjecting them, for long periods, to the de- 
pressing influences of solitude and gloom. It 
was thought that when a man had been virtually 
buried alive for a month or two, he would be more 
inclined to make full confession, or, at least, that 
he would be less able to hold his mental grip 
under a brow-beating and terrifying examination. 
For this reason, everything was done — particu- 
larly at first — ^to make the conditions of impris- 
onment as trying as possible to mind and nerves. 
General Strelnikof even put metallic hoods over 
the windows of prison cells, in order to deprive 
the occupants of the cheer and comfort that they 
might get from sunshine. In the fortress, how- 
ever, this was not necessary, as the light which 
came in through the high tunnels of the half- 
walled-up embrasures was dim and feeble at best. 

The first break in the monotony of my life came 
about a month after my incarceration, when I 

201 



^^THE WOKLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

was taken to the gloomy chamber of the corps de 
garde for examination. An official in blue uni- 
form, whom I did not know, asked me a great 
number of questions with regard to my political 
activity and my associates; but as I refused to 
answer most of them, I was sent back to my cell, 
with the warning that if I continued to maintain 
this obstinate attitude I might be condemned to 
penal servitude. 

Then began what seemed to me an eternity of 
loneliness, solitude and gloom. Once a day, a 
soldier entered the casemate to change the 
drawer of the commode; three times a day an- 
other handed me food through the port-hole ; and 
once a month a third came with scissors to cut 
my hair and nails ; but none of these men would 
talk, or allow me to talk, and they were changed 
so often, from corridor to corridor and from 
bastion to ravelin, that I seldom saw the same 
face twice. Their visits, however, were the 
events of my life; and in the intervals between 
them I had nothing to do but think, pace my cell, 
listen to the faint, mournful chiming of the 
cathedral bells, and watch apprehensively for the 
appearance of the vigilant but impersonal eyes at 
the slit of the "Judas." 

The greatest danger of solitary confinement 
. 202 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

under such conditions is that of going melan- 
choly mad, and against this danger I endeavored 
to guard by inventing occupations for mind and 
hands. The first thing I tried was saving a part 
of my daily ration of bread, moistening it in my 
mouth, and then molding it into figures. This 
promised well, and I thought it might even be 
possible to make a few bread chessmen, with 
which I could think out openings and endings 
and contrive problems. I soon discovered, how- 
ever, that this form of activity was prohibited. 
On the second or third day, the eyes at the peep- 
hole happened to notice what I was doing, and a 
few moments later, a warden entered the case- 
mate, took away my figures, and threatened me 
with the Jcartser [a perfectly dark punishment 
cell] . Then I tried unraveling one of my stock- 
ings, in order to get yarn with which I could 
invent knots and practice tying them. This, too, 
was soon discovered and forbidden. I was 
finally reduced to mental arithmetic and the com- 
position and memorization of editorials; but 
these exercises were fatiguing and did not satisfy 
my craving for occupation and diversion. 

The longing for some familiar sound to break 
the eternal silence led me, one day, to try talking 
aloud to myself ; but this also was prohibited, as 

203 



^^THE WOKLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

a violation of prison rules, and all that I could 
do, when the stillness became intolerable, was 
to hiccough artificially or cough. For three 
months the only sounds I heard were infrequent 
orders in a low tone from the generally silent 
soldiers of the guard ; the dull boom of the noon 
gun from the parapet ; and the chiming of "Have 
Mercy, O Lord,'' "How Glorious Is Our Lord in 
Zion,'' and "God Save the Czar,'' from the belfry 
of the fortress cathedral. I continued to rap on 
the side walls with my knuckles, every three or 
four days, with a faint hope that a prisoner might 
have been put into one of the adjoining cells 
noiselessly during the night; but I never got a 
response. And yet, the saying of the hrodyag 
that intercommunication between cells is always 
possible proved, at last, to be true. When 
winter came on, and my health began to fail so 
noticeably as to attract the attention of the 
guard, I was taken out to walk, for fifteen or 
twenty minutes every day, in the walled court- 
yard. Presuming that other prisoners were 
taken there separately at other times, and remem- 
bering the instructions of the hrodyag in the 
Litovski Zamok, I scrutinized closely every 
square yard of trodden snow, and on the second 
or third day I noticed, picked up, and transferred 

204 



"THE WOKLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

to my mouth, unobserved, an object that looked 
like a small gray marble. When I had been 
taken back to my cell and the guard had gone, I 
examined it, and found it to be a frozen sphere of 
bread. As soon as it thawed out, I opened it, and 
discovered a crumpled bit of cigarette paper in 
which groups of holes had been pricked with a 
pin. The holes were numerically equivalent to 
the letters "b-l-o-k'' in the checkerboard square, 
and Blok was the name of one of my classmates 
in the university. I had lost sight of him after 
my graduation, and did not know that he had 
been arrested ; but the fact that he was a fellow- 
prisoner in the fortress gave me at once a feeling 
of companionship, and the receipt of what was 
practically a message from him cheered and 
inspirited me more than anything that had hap- 
pened to me. 

Three or four days later, fortune befriended me 
again. In the course of one of my walks in the 
courtyard I picked up a cigarette which had been 
thrown away by one of the guard because the 
wrapper had burst, and that same day, at noon, I 
found in my bowl of soup a small but fairly solid 
piece of chopped-off bone attached to a mouthful 
of meat. The cigarette wrapper I concealed in 
the toe of my felt slipper, and the bone I hid in 

205 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

the pillow of my bed. I then had paper and a 
knocker. Neither was immediately available, be- 
cause I had nothing to mark or pierce the paper 
with, and nobody to knock to; but I felt sure 
that I should find a use for them later, and even 
if I did not, the mere fact that I had something 
of my own gave me a feeling of satisfaction. In 
the outside world, a scrap of paper and a bone 
are not a large capital, but in a world of a single 
cell they are wealth. With a nail, the hrodyag in 
the Litovski Zamok had given me a full course of 
instruction in telegraphy, applied mathematics, 
and prison strategy, and with a little moistened 
bread, half a cigarette and a pin, Blok had given 
me hope, a feeling of companionship, and a new 
interest in life. 

II. THE GIRL IN NO. 59 

The finding of my classmate's name in a frozen 
sphere of bread, picked up in the courtyard, 
turned all my thoughts into a new channel. If 
Blok could get his name through to me by the 
courtyard route, I could perhaps communicate 
with him in the same way. He would scrutinize 
the ground over which he passed even more 
closely than I did, and would be sure to pick up, 
in the course of his daily walk, anything that I 

206 



"THE WOELD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

might drop in the course of mine. But how 
should I make a record? My cigarette wrapper 
would hold six or eight words, but what should 
I write them with? Blok had apparently used a 
pin. I had no pin, and there was absolutely 
nothing in my cell with which I could make a 
legible mark on thin paper. I tried rubbing the 
quill of a small feather from "my pillow in the 
black charred top of the lamp wick; but this 
experiment failed. In ransacking my memory 
for methods of recording thought practised by 
primitive man, I happened, at last, to think of 
the quipu, and the idea occurred to me that by ty- 
ing groups of knots in a thread, I could make the 
numbers of the checkerboard square. Getting 
an unbroken thread of the necessary length 
would be difficult, but not impossible. There 
was material enough in the cotton cover of my 
pillow, and I could unweave the fabric, a little 
at a time, while lying in my bed at night. The 
guard only glanced into the cell when I seemed to 
be asleep, and there was little probability that 
he would notice what I was doing. 

At the end of three days I had in hand a thread 
ten or twelve feet long, in which there were 
more than a hundred knots. These knots, in the 
checkerboard-square code, made the words: 

207 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

"Voronin — Well — Courage." I thought at first 
that I would follow Blok's example by enclos- 
ing the record in a sphere of moistened bread; 
but upon reflection I decided to tangle it up a 
little and drop it on the ground in a snarl. It 
would look like an innocent bit of raveling, and 
the chances were ten to one that the soldiers of 
the guard would give it no attention^ even if they 
noticed it. On the following day, when I was 
taken out for my walk, I carried the thread to the 
courtyard in my mouth, dropped it beside the 
path near a little tuft of withered grass, and 
w^ent back to my cell filled with hopeful anticipa- 
tions. Blok would find the quipu, and it would 
encourage him, as the finding of his name in a 
ball of frozen bread had encouraged me. I even 
hoped that I might get a reply from him. 

When I next visited the courtyard, the knotted 
thread was gone ; but the hope that it would elicit 
a reply was never realized. Day after day, I 
searched the small pentagonal courtyard with 
my eyes, as I paced across it from wall to wall ; 
but neither on the path, nor beside it, was there 
anything that looked promising. Still, I did not 
allow myself to become discouraged. The 
hrodyag in the Litovski Zamok had rapped out 
the word "understand-' more than a hundred 

208 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

times before he got into communication with me, 
and I ought to have at least as much patience as 
a muzhik. Besides that, these attempts at inter- 
communication gave me something to do and 
think of. 

In the course of the next fortnight, I prepared 
and dropped in the courtyard three more thread 
quipus, which I made and knotted while lying in 
my bed at night. I was also able to utilize, at 
last, my hoarded cigarette wrapper. In a bowl 
of fish soup, which was given me one Sunday for 
dinner, I found a slender bone which I made into 
an awl by sharpening it on the concrete floor. 
With this I pricked groups of holes in the paper, 
to correspond with numbers in the checkerboard 
square, and inclosing the message in a small 
bread ball, I dropped it in the courtyard. All of 
these communications were picked up by some- 
body. Every one disappeared within forty-eight 
hours, and most of them within twenty-four ; but 
not one of them ever brought me what could 
properly be called a response. In the course of 
January and February, I picked up in the court- 
yard two balls of bread with scraps of cigarette 
paper inclosed. One contained a man's name 
written, apparently, with the end of a half -burnt 
match, and the other a different name pricked in 

209 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

the paper with a splinter or a iDin. Each of the 
writers doubtless wished to inform somebody 
that he had been arrested, or that he was still 
alive ; but neither of them was known to me. 

I finally became satisfied, from experiment and 
reflection, that there was little chance of reach- 
ing in this way any particular person. It was 
like throwing overboard a message in a bottle at 
sea, with the expectation that it would be picked 
up by a particular ship. In the Trubetskoi 
bastion, at that time, there were twenty or thirty 
political prisoners, and all took their exercise 
daily, but separately, in that courtyard. Some 
of them — who had not had the benefit of a 
hrodyag^s instruction — might not think of look- 
ing on the ground for a bit of bread or a piece of 
string; but most of them probably would think of 
it, and my particular message would be found by 
the man who happened to follow me. That man 
might be Blok, but the chances were twenty or 
thirty to one that it would be somebody else. . 

So far as I could subsequently learn, no polit- 
ical prisoner who was in the fortress that winter 
ever succeeded in getting a reply to a message 
dropped in the courtyard. Many replies were 
made, but they all went criss-cross and fell into 
wrong hands. Two of my quipus and the bread- 

210 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

enclosed cigarette wrapper were found, but the 
prisoners who discovered them did not know me, 
and Blok, for whom they were intended, picked 
up two or three communications from men who 
were strangers to him. One of his finds, as he 
afterward told me, was a bit of window glass on 
which three or four words and a name had been 
written with grease — probably from soup — 
which congealed and became visible in the frosty 
air of the courtyard. 

About the middle of January, the severity of 
the fortress regime, so far at least as it concerned 
me, was relaxed. After another inquisitorial ex- 
amination by an offlcer of the Third Section, I 
was notified that a single member of my family 
would be permitted to see me once a month, and 
that I might have officially approved books in my 
cell. The first family interview^, which was with 
my mother, proved to be so distressing to us both 
that I begged her not to come again. It took 
place in a small gloomy room fitted up for the 
purpose with two partitions, or screens, of heavy 
wire netting. I stood behind one screen, and 
my mother, six or eight feet away, stood behind 
the other, while between us, at a small table, sat 
a gendarme, who listened to all that was said, 
and who warned us that the talk must be strictly 

211 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

confined to family matters. Any reference to 
public affairs, or contemporary events, would be 
followed by the breaking off of the interview and 
the withdrawal of the privilege. But to look 
through two wire screens at my mother's tear- 
wet, grief-stricken face, and exchange a few 
words with her over the head of an unsympa- 
thetic gendarme, was a refined form of torture, 
rather than a privilege. My changed appear- 
ance was a shock, of course, to her, while her sobs 
and piteous inquiries about my health were very 
trying emotionally to me. If I could have taken 
her in my arms and comforted her, the interview 
might have strengthened and consoled us both; 
but what can one say across an eight-foot wire 
cage in which there sits a hostile of&cial? 
When, at the end of ^ye or ten minutes, the 
gendarme rose to his feet, I took one last look at 
my mother's convulsed, agonized face and went 
back to my cell. Poor mother ! Momentous 
events in the outside world, which she did not 
dare speak about to me, made her fear that I 
might be sent into penal servitude.^ 

5 These events were the beginning of terrorism ; and the 
assassination or attempted assassination of General Mezent- 
sof, Chief of Gendarmes; Governor Krapotkin of Kharkof ; 
General Drenteln, Chief of the Third Section, and finally 
the Czar.— G. K. 

212 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

More consoling to me than any possible inter- 
view through wire screens was the permission to 
have books in my cell. No volume less than ten 
years old was allowed, and there were certain 
restrictions with regard to subjects ; but science 
and standard fiction were not regarded as in- 
cendiary, and no objection was made to Darwin's 
"Origin of Species'' (an expurgated Russian 
edition which I read a second time), nor to the 
well known works of English and American 
novelists, with which I was less familiar than 
with our own literature. I read at that time, I 
remember, Dickens's "David Copperfield" and 
"Old Curiosity Shop," and the "Leatherstocking 
Tales" of your countryman. Cooper. Every 
book was carefully examined, leaf by leaf, when 
I returned it, in order to make sure that I had 
made no marks in it, and that no paper had been 
torn out of it. 

During the remainder of the winter the con- 
ditions of my life did not materially change, ex- 
cept in the matter of light. As the season 
advanced the days became longer, and the lamp 
in my cell was lighted at 5 p. m, instead of 2, and 
put out at 7 A. M., instead of 10; but there was 
never light enough to be cheering, while there 
was always enough to show the black walls, the 

213 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

vaulted ceiling^ the high grated window, and the 
eyes at the peep-hole in the door. Eight or ten 
hours of total darkness every day would have 
been a relief, because in darkness one's imagina- 
tion may wander freely, while in the light it is 
restricted by the barriers of visible reality. 

Before the end of the winter my health was 
seriously impaired. My appetite failed; assim- 
ilation of food became imperfect; I grew emaci- 
ated ; and began to suffer from sleeplessness and 
neurasthenia. The state of my body, however, 
gave me less concern than the state of my mind. 
In spite of all that I could do, I found myself 
sinking into an apathetic melancholia, from 
which I was roused only by short paroxysms of 
acute nervous irritability, in which the chiming 
of "Have Mercy, O Lord" from the belfry of the 
fortress cathedral every fifteen minutes, and the 
appearance of the expressionless eyes at the slit 
in the door every half hour, seemed to me not 
only torturing, but absolutely insupportable. 
But a great change was at hand. 

Two or three times in the early spring, when I 
happened to be awake in the middle of the night, 
I heard footsteps and the jingling clash of chains 
in the corridor. I knew that these sounds indi- 
cated the bringing in of "important" or "danger- 

214 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

ous'' political prisoners in leg-fetters; but that 
these additions to the fortress population would 
affect my life in any way was a thought that 
never occurred to me. And yet^ the new comers 
were destined to bring about a radical change 
in the worst of the fortress conditions, and to 
widen immeasurably the horizon of my world. 
Throughout the winter, the number of prisoners 
in the bastion had been so small that the jailers 
could leave a cell empty on each side of every 
man. This had the effect of making the isolation 
in every case complete, because there was no pos- 
sibility of communicating by means of knocks 
across an empty cell. Owing, however, to an 
event in the outside world of which I was ig- 
norant (the adoption of the policy of terror by 
the extreme wing of the revolutionary party ) the 
number of political arrests suddenly and greatly 
increased, and in the spring of 1879, the police 
of the Third Section sent to the fortress more 
than forty persons who were regarded as too 
"important," or too "dangerous,'' to be confined 
in prisons of the ordinary type.^ This compelled 
the fortress authorities to put a prisoner into 

6 At the time to which Voronin refers, General Drenteln, 
Chief of the Third Section, caused more than a thousand 
arrests to be made in St. Petersburg alone.: — G. K. 

215 



"THE WOKLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

every cell, and made it impossible to isolate a 
man completely by sandwiching bim between 
two cells that were empty. I did not know this, 
nor did I know that the bastion was rapidly fill- 
ing up. All of the new men came in the night, 
and I did not always hear them unless they hap- 
pened to be in leg-fetters. The hateful sound of 
clashing chains generally roused me, even when 
I was asleep, but dozens of prisoners were 
brought in noiselessly, and nearly all of the 
empty casemates on my corridor had been filled 
before I even suspected it. 

One morning in the late springs — I think it was 
May, but I had almost lost count of days and 
months, — I was startled by what seemed to be a 
faint regular throbbing in the wall of the case- 
mate to which the head of my bed was bolted. I 
thought for an instant that it might be hallucina- 
tion — I was in constant dread of that — ^but upon 
pressing my ear to the wall I could hear it dis- 
tinctly — knock knock — knock knock — knock 
knock. With shaking hand I replied, using the 
same signal. Then, in the long disused but well 
remembered numbers of the checkerboard square 
came the same inquiry that the hrodyag had 
made in the Litovski Zamok : 

216 



"THE WOKLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

"Understand?'' 

"Yes," I replied. 

"Thank God ! Who is it ?" 

"Eugene Voronin." 

"I don't know the name. Have you been here 
long?" 

"About ten months. Who are you?" 

"Olga Novitskaya." 

A woman ! And she knew the numbers of the 
checkerboard square! I was so astounded that 
for a moment I made no response, but I did not 
lose my wits. The eyes of the guard at the slit 
of the "Judas" had made too deep an impression 
on me to be forgotten, even in excitement. 

"Stop knocking" I said. "It is nearly time for 
the guard. Wait until I call you." 

When the sentinel looked into the casemate, all 
was quiet, and I was apparently reading. As 
soon as he had gone, and I could count with 
reasonable certainty upon twenty minutes of 
safety, I knocked again for attention and in- 
quired: "Where are you from?" 

"Moscow." 

"Do you know anything that has happened 
outside this year?" 

"Yes, almost everything." 

217 



"THE A¥OELD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

"Tell me.'^ 

"Have you heard of the attempt to assassinate 
the Czar?" 

"No." 

"Then you don't know that Mezentsef" [Chief 
of Gendarmes] "and Krapotkin" [governor of 
Kharkof] "have been killed?" 

"No ; who killed them ?" 

"Terrorists; by order of the Executive Com- 
mittee of the revolutionary party. They have 
just tried to kill Drenteln" [Chief of the Third 
Section] "and last of all the Czar. There have 
been thousands of arrests." 

"How did you hear? Are you just from out- 
side?" 

"No ; I have been in the Moscow prison several 
months. I learned the knock alphabet there, 
and they could n't keep the news from us ; it was 
signaled to us from outside, with a book and a 
candle, at night." 

"When were you brought here?" 

"Yesterday; and I was horribly afraid this 
morning that my knocks would not be heard or 
understood — the walls look so thick." 

"Is the charge against you serious?" 

"I don't know. I 'm not a terrorist, but this 
is my second term of imprisonment. I suppose 

218 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

the charge will he revolutionary propaganda. 
I shall prohahly go to Siheria, hut I'm not 
afraid." 

During the next two or three days, I talked 
with Miss Novitskaya perhaps a dozen times in 
the intervals between the visits of the guard to 
our doors, and obtained from her an outline of 
her life and experience. She was the daughter 
of a small landed proprietor living near Tver, 
and had become interested, even as a young girl, 
in the educational crusade for the uplift of the 
peasants which was widely known in the seven- 
ties as "going to the people." When, a few years 
later, she became a student in the Women's Uni- 
versity in Moscow, she taught, for a time, in a 
secret night school for factory operatives; but 
she was soon arrested, and was held in prison 
about five months. Upon her release, she joined 
a circle of fellow students — men and women — 
who met once a week for the discussion of social 
and political questions. This circle soon became 
revolutionary in spirit, if not in practice; and 
when it was broken up by the police, some of its 
members resisted arrest, and all were thrown 
into prison as possible terrorists. 

Such, in brief, was my fellow prisoner's his- 
tory. It was a common story. Hundreds of re- 

219 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

fined and cultivated young women, at that time, 
had a similar experience. 

After I got into communication with the girl 
in No. 59, events followed one another so rapidly 
that I was kept constantly in a state of excite- 
ment and emotional tension. Two or three days 
later, a prisoner was put into No. 57, and he soon 
began knocking to me. We did not know each 
other, even by name ; but he had just been trans- 
ferred from another part of the bastion, and 
could give me news that was even more impor- 
tant to me than that which I had learned from 
Miss Novitskaya. 

"Don't be afraid to knock," he said. "The 
guard can't stop it, even if they see you. The 
bastion is full, and there aren't dark cells enough 
to hold a tenth of us. The worst they can do now 
is to give us ^dungeon conditions' " [bread and 
water] "and we can stand that. The dark cells 
have already been filled." 

My new neighbor's statements were soon con- 
firmed. The guard caught me in the act of 
knocking that very day, but could not — or at 
least did not — carry out his threat to imprison 
me in a dark cell. My book and exercise priv- 
ileges were withdrawn, and I was put on a 
dungeon diet of bread and water; but what did 

220 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

I care for books or exercise or even food, when I 
could once more exchange thoughts and share 
emotions with sympathetic human beings? 

Our jailers, however, were not at the end of 
their resources. A few mornings later, I called 
Miss Novitskaya and began to talk to her about 
recent events in the outside world — events that 
to me were so new and startling. Her knocking 
was slower than usual, and she did not make use 
of abbreviations in spelling, as she had been ac- 
customed to do. Her talk, too, seemed formal 
and perfunctory, instead of eager and impulsive 
as it had been before. 

"Are you ill?" I inquired. 
"No; I am quite well." 
"You seem strange in some way." 
"I did not sleep much last night, and have a 
headache." 

She then began to talk about revolutionary ac- 
tivity in St. Petersburg, and to inquire the names 
of persons with whom I had been associated in the 
circle to which I belonged. I had no reason what- 
ever for distrusting her, but I did not care to give 
names to any one, and particularly to a woman, 
who, after long imprisonment, might not have 
firmness of character enough to hold her mental 
grip under the strain of a threatening and terri- 

221 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'^ 

fying examination by an experienced officer of 
police. I therefore broke off the conversation, 
and said that I would call her again later. 

In less than an hour, my neighbor on the other 
side — a revolutionist named Kobeko — signaled 
to me and knocked out rapidly the words: 

"Don't talk to No. 59. Novitskaya is not 
there. They transferred her in the night to a 
cell above yours in the upper tier, and they may 
have put a police spy in her place. Be careful !" 

So this was the explanation of the strangeness, 
the "headache/' and the inquiries for names ! 

After a moment's reflection, I determined to 
have another short interview with the spy in No. 
59, who knew the checkerboard square, and who 
had set this trap for me. He responded at once 
to my call, and, rapping out the words without 
abbreviations, I said: 

"No spy can play the part of an intelligent 
woman, even behind a wall. You '11 succeed 
with your lies when the just God dies." [Rus- 
sian proverb.] 

He seemed to be taken aback, and for a mo- 
ment made no reply. Then he rapped out slowly 
the words : 

"You traitors will die before God does, and 
some of you very soon." 

222 



"THE WOELD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

This was my first experience with a police spy, 
and it made me cautious. I did not, however, 
cease to communicate with Kobeko, and through 
him I learned that in a neighboring casemate — 
No. 56 of the lower tier — was my dear friend 
Dubrovin, a lieutenant in the Willmanstrand in- 
fantry regiment, of whose arrest I had not heard. 
He had been brought to the fortress in leg-fetters, 
and Kobeko, who also knew him well, seemed to 
think that his case was very serious, partly be- 
cause he was an army officer, and partly because 
he had drawn a weapon and offered resistance to 
the police at the time of his arrest. The least 
that he could expect, Kobeko thought, was penal 
servitude for life. I dreaded an even worse fate 
than that for him, because it was foreshadowed 
in the threat of the police spy — "You traitors 
will die before God does, and some of you very 
soon." 

Two or three days later (I know now that 
it was the 30th of May) Kobeko called me and 
said : 

"Dubrovin is to be hanged, in one of the court- 
yards at sunrise to-morrow morning. A priest 
has just been with him. Can't we bid him good- 
by with our voices, instead of with knocks. Our 
window sashes are open, and I think he can hear 

223 



^THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

lis. Let us try, about midnight ; it will perhaps 
be safest then." 

Long before the appointed hour, I was stand- 
ing below my window, thinking what I could say 
to strengthen and encourage my friend and com- 
rade in the last hours of his life. Under such 
conditions it would be impossible to say much, 
and possibly our jailers would prevent us from 
saying anything. 

The bells of the fortress cathedral had just 
finished chiming the midnight melody — "God 
Save the Czar" — when I heard a voice crying 
"Dubrovin I" 

As if answering at a roll call, a deeper voice 
replied : 

"Present." 

I don't know what I expected Kobeko to say, 
but I certainly expected him to say something, 
and yet, Dubrovin's response was followed by 
perfect silence. A minute passed — two minutes 
— and still I could hear nothing. Kobeko had 
apparently broken down under the strain of emo- 
tion and could not speak. At last the bass voice 
called : 

"Voronin !" 

"I 'm here," I replied. 

"Sing Beranger's ^Old Corpora? " [a poem 

224 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

that had been set to music in Russia and that we 
had often sung together in happier days]. 

I was so overcome with sympathy and grief 
that it seemed impossible to sing, but if Beran- 
ger's "Old CorporaF' could give my comrade any 
comfort, I must try. Two or three other prison- 
ers joined in at the second line, and with their 
support I managed to get through the first 
stanza. 

"Good!'' said Dubrovin. "Sing the next 
verse.'' 

His voice was steady, but something in its 
quality showed that he was deeply moved. I 
made a desperate effort to go on, but broke down 
at the third line. Not one of us was able to fin- 
ish the second verse, although the melody, with- 
out the words, was carried to the end by a clear 
contralto voice in one of the casemates of the 
upper tier. 

"Thank you," said Dubrovin; "that will do. 
Good night." 

I went away from the window, threw myself on 
my bed, and bit deep into my arm to keep from 
sobbing. 

None of us ever heard the condemned man's 
voice again, although he rapped good-by to 
Kobeko just before he was taken to the scaffold. 

225 



^^THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

We had not said to him what we meant to say, 
but he had seemed reluctant to speak of his own 
impending death, and the singing of "The Old 
Corporal" had so unmanned us all that we could 
not even bid him good-by without showing him 
our weakness and thus making it harder for him 
to die with dignity and self-possession. It would 
have been different perhaps if we had been in a 
normal condition, and had been accustomed to 
use our voices and to hear the voices of others in 
daily life. 

The fortress authorities made no attempt to 
stop our communication with Dubrovin, al- 
though, of course, they were aware of it. Perhaps 
they thought that by allowing us to talk and lis- 
tening to what we said they could get information 
that would prove useful, or perhaps even they 
were ashamed to deny the poor privilege of a 
farewell to a man who was to die on the scaffold 
at dawn. I do not know. 

A whole day passed before Kobeko and I tried 
to communicate with each other again. Scanty 
food, sleeplessness, and emotional strain had ex- 
hausted us both, and in the depression that fol- 
lowed Dubrovin's death we felt no impulse to 
talk. On the second day, however, he called me 
and said : 

226 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

"Olga Novitskaya is in the casemate directly 
over yours in the upper tier. We have found 
that we can communicate with the upper cells 
through our tables. They are bolted into the 
walls, and knocks can be heard through them. 
Put your ear to your table. Olga will call you." 

In less than five minutes, Miss Novitskaya and 
I were again in communication. Her knocks 
came to me very faintly, but the stillness in the 
fortress was so profound that when I pressed my 
ear to the table I could hear them. 

Then began a knock-alphabet correspondence 
which lasted throughout the whole remaining 
term of our imprisonment. Making the intimate 
acquaintance of a woman, without ever seeing 
her or hearing her voice, was for me a strange 
experience; but it is not too much, I think, to 
say that in the next three months I came to know 
Olga Novitskaya better than I knew any other 
human being except my mother. We talked of 
everything — childhood, parents, domestic life, 
university experience, friends, books, the state 
of Russia, " going to the people," and the revolu- 
tionary movement — and the more completely she 
revealed herself to me, the more deeply I was 
impressed by her courage, intelligence, sympathy, 
cheerfulness, and, at times, even gaiety of spirit. 

227 



"THE WOELD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

If she was ever disheartened, or depressed^ slie 
did not show it to me. She always looked for- 
ward to a brighter future, for Kussia and for our- 
selves ; and if I was able to bear with reasonable 
fortitude the hardships and privations of my 
last three months in the Trubetskoi bastion, the 
credit was hers. 

About midsummer, when we had been freed 
from dungeon conditions and had been permitted 
to resume our daily walks in the courtyard, I 
celebrated my first birthday in prison. Early in 
the morning, Olga and Kobeko knocked to me 
their greetings and good wishes, and a few hours 
later the former said : 

"I have just come from my walk. I picked a 
sprig of blossoming kuroslepnik [chickweed] for 
your birthday. I could n't send it to you, but I 
left it at the corner of the bathhouse next the 
path. Look for it, and imagine that it is a spray 
of landysh [lily of the valley] . It 's all I could 
find." 

The bit of chickweed was withered when I got 
it, but I have the dry dust of it yet. 

The end of our fortress imprisonment came in 
August. About three o'clock one morning, a 
warden unlocked and opened the door of my cell 
and said to me : "Come." I followed him to the 

228 



1 



^^THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

office of the prison, where the commander of the 
convoy made a careful examination of my person, 
noted my features and physical characteristics as 
set forth in a description which he held in his 
hand, and at last, being apparently satisfied as to 
my identity, received me formally from the prison 
authorities. I was then taken to the corps de 
garde, a large room on the ground floor, at the 
door of which stood an armed sentry. The 
.spacious hut low and gloomy hall was dimly 
lighted by a few flaring lamps and candles, and 
in the middle of it, at two long bare tables, sat 
ten or fifteen men and women, in coarse gray 
overcoats, drinking tea. Most of these prisoners 
were condemned convicts from the Alexis ravelin 
and other little known parts of the fortress, and 
all were in leg-fetters. Near the door, in a little 
group, stood six or eight uniformed gendarmes 
and officers of the detective police, several of 
them masked, who watched the prisoners in- 
tently, whispering now and then among them- 
selves as if communicating to one another the 
results of their observations. The stillness of 
the room was broken only by the faint hissing of 
two or three brass samovars on the tables, and 
an occasional jingle of chains as one of the con- 
victs moved his feet. There was no conversation, 



^^THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

and a chance observer never would have im- 
agined that the gray-coated figures sitting si- 
lently side by side at the tables were near friends, 
and in some cases relatives, who had long been 
buried in the casemates of the fortress, and who 
were looking into one another's faces for the first 
time in years. 

As I entered the room, one of the prisoners, 
whose face I did not at first recognize but who 
proved to be Blok, rushed forward to meet me, 
and as he threw his arms around me he whis- 
pered in my ear : 

^^Don't recognize anybody but me — the gen- 
darmes are watching us." I understood the 
warning. The police really knew very little 
about the history and the revolutionary records 
of some of the politicals who were present, and 
it was important that they should not be able to 
get a clue to any one's identity or past history 
by noting recognitions as prisoner after prisoner 
was brought in. The incautious manifestation 
of emotion by one convict, as he met another, 
might result in the return of both to the case- 
mates of the fortress and their detention there 
until their mutual relations could be investi- 
gated. This was the reason for the silence that 
prevailed throughout the gloomy hall, and for 

230 



"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

the seeming indifference with which the prisoners 
regarded one another. They were apparently 
strangers, but in reality they were bound to- 
gether by innumerable ties of friendship and 
memories of the past; and as they looked into one 
another's faces, and noted the changes that time 
and suffering had wrought, they maintained their 
composure only by the most heroic effort. On 
one side of the table sat an old comrade of whom 
we had heard nothing in years and whom we had 
all supposed to be dead. On the other side were 
a young man and his betrothed, who for three 
years had not seen each other, and who, when 
thus reunited under the eyes of the gendarmes, 
did not dare to speak. Near them sat a pale thin 
woman about twenty-seven years of age, who held 
in her arms a sickly baby born in a casemate of 
the fortress, and who looked anxiously at the 
door every time it opened, with the hope of seeing 
her husband brought in to join the party. Many 
of us knew that her husband was dead, but no 
one dared to tell her that she watched the door 
in vain. 

There were five women present when I entered 
the room, and I looked eagerly at them all, think- 
ing that Olga might be among them and that I 
might recognize her; but most of them seemed 

231 



^^THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

too old, and none of them resembled the imag- 
inary picture that I had in my mind. I had 
nearly abandoned hope, when a soldier came in 
with a sixth woman — a young girl, twenty -two or 
twenty-three years of age, with dark hair gath- 
ered uj) in a big high knot; dark luminous eyes 
with faint shadows under them ; a pale brunette 
complexion; and features that were harmonious 
and attractive without being perfectly regular. 

"It must be Olga !'' I said to myself, and as she 
took a seat at one of the tables I looked at her 
with almost fierce intensity, as if I could compel 
her in that way to recognize me. But her glance 
swept across my face without a sign of interest, 
and then became fixed on the masked police and 
the gendarmes. She was perfectly self-con- 
trolled, and her pale, resolute face showed 
neither excitement nor fear. 

Nothing could have been more dramatic than 
the scene in that gloomy hall at half-past four 
o'clock in the morning, when the last of the pris- 
oners had been brought in. The strange and un- 
natural stillness, in a room filled with people ; the 
contrast between the blue and silver uniforms of 
the gendarmes and the leg-fetters and gray over- 
coats of the convicts; the furtive whispering of 
the masked police and the silence and assumed 

232 



"THE WOELD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 

stolidity of the pale-faced men and women whom 
they watched; — all this would have made the 
scene striking and impressive, even to a chance 
spectator. To one, however, who could look be- 
neath the surface of things — who could appreci- 
ate the tragic significance of the situation, and 
see, with spiritual insight, the hot tides of hatred, 
agony, sympathy, and pity, which surged under 
those gray overcoats — the scene was not merely 
striking and impressive, but terrible and heart- 
rending. 

At five o'clock in the morning, we were taken 
in closed and curtained carriages to the station 
of the Nikolaievsk Railway. There, under the 
direction of armed guards, we took seats in a con- 
vict car and began our long journey to Siberia. 
The hard-labor convicts, who were all in leg- 
fetters, were destined for the mines of Kara ; but 
the administrative exiles — Miss Novitskaya, 
Blok and I — were to be taken to Semipalatinsk, 
Ust Kamenogorsk, and Ulbinsk. 

I met Olga, for the first time, in the train. It 
was incredibly strange to have to make the ac- 
quaintance of her body, her voice, her facial ex- 
pression — everything — for the first time, when I 
already knew her soul to its profoundest depths. 
I don't know when I first felt sure that I loved 

233 



"THE WOKLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 

her, but I think it was when I picked up the with- 
ered sprig of chickweed that she left for me, on 
my birthday, "at the corner of the bathhouse 
next the path" in the courtyard of the Trubetskoi 
bastion. 

We went up the Irtish River together in a con- 
vict barge, and before I bade her good-by at 
Semipalatinsk, where she was to remain, we were 
betrothed. Her term of exile was shorter than 
mine, and when it ended she joined me in Ulbinsk, 
where we were married soon after you were 
there. 

When I told you, a year ago, that the biggest 
thing of my life happened to me in the fortress, I 
warned you that it was very personal. You said 
that you wanted the story, and here it is. 



234 



A SACEILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 



VIII 
A SACEILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

ONE evening in February, about three years 
ago, I chanced to be sitting in an apart- 
ment of the Hotel Judson, in New York City, 
talking with a young Polish lawyer from Minsk. 
He had come to the United States a short time 
before as a political refugee, and had brought a 
letter of introduction to me from a valued and 
trusted friend in St. Petersburg. As he seemed 
to be a man of culture, courage, and resolution, 
I felt curious to know what his history had been 
and what the circumstances were that had forced 
or induced him to leave his native country. 
There were reasons enough, of course, for a man's 
leaving Russia; but I had found in experience 
that expatriation in such cases is generally due 
to some specific determining cause, rather than 
to general political conditions, and that such 
cause is often connected with an interesting per- 
sonal story. At the first favorable opportunity 
therefore I asked my visitor the direct question, 

237 



A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

"What finally made you decide to get out of 
Russia?'' 

"A Russian fox/' he replied gravely. 

The answer was so unexpected and appar- 
ently so irrelevant that I was rather taken aback, 
and looked at him for a moment in puzzled sur- 
prise. Then the thought occurred to me that 
he was probably speaking figuratively, and that 
the fox in question was some Russian official — a 
governor or chief of police^ — who had the cun- 
ning and subtlety with which the fox, in Russia 
as in America, is usually credited. 

"Do you mean a real fox," I asked, "or merely 
a man with foxy characteristics?" 

"I mean a real fox," he replied. "If a red Rus- 
sian fox with pointed ears and a bushy tail had 
not left tracks in the snow on the edge of a cer- 
tain piece of woods four or ^ye years ago, I might 
still be practising my profession in Minsk." 

"It sounds like the beginning of a story," I said 
encouragingly. 

"It is a story," he assented, "or rather a 
tragedy; but it isn't primarily mine. I was 
finally brought into it, but I played only a sub- 
ordinate part. The real actors were a Polish 
landed proprietor and his friends, two or three 
priests of the Greek Church, a Black Hundred 

238 



A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

representative in the Duma, and a Russian fox. 
It is a common saying that ^Russia is the land of 
unlimited iDossibilities/ but, with all your Si- 
berian experience, could you possibly imagine a 
Russian fox entering into a conspiracy with a 
Catholic Pole to dishonor the Holy Orthodox 
Church?" 

"Well, hardly," I replied. "The fox in our 
fairy tales sometimes does queer things, but noth- 
ing so queer as that. How did it happen — if it 
did happen?" 

"The story is an almost incredible one," he 
said, "but the facts are on record in the Circuit 
Court of Minsk, and also in the archives of the 
Governing Senate" [the Russian Supreme Court] 
"in St. Petersburg. The fox is dead ; but, if we 
can trust the findings of a Russian jury, he died 
in trying to help a Catholic Pole express his 
hatred and contempt for the Greek faith. Have 
you been in any of the Polish provinces of Russia 
since the revolution of 1905?" 

"No," I said. "I passed through that part of 
the Empire several times in earlier years, but I 
have n't been there since 1901." 

"Then I 'd better begin by telling you some- 
thing about the state of affairs in Russian Poland 
at the time when this fox case came up. I'm 

239 



A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

afraid you won't believe the story at all if I 
don't give you the historical background. You 
remember, perhaps, that the revolutionary move- 
ment of 1905-6 received much of its support from 
the so-called ^alien' nationalities of Russia, par- 
ticularly the Jews, the Georgians, and the Poles. 
When it was finally defeated, largely through 
the bloody pogroms which were planned by the 
monarchists and executed by the Black Hun- 
dreds, the Government determined not only to 
punish these ^alien' peoples for their revolution- 
ary sympathies and activities, but, as far as pos- 
sible, to break up their racial or national solid- 
arity and Russianize them at the point of the 
bayonet. Field courts-martial, punitive expe- 
ditions, and sentences of exile almost decimated 
the male population of the southern and western 
provinces, and the policy of repression, which 
has always been rigorous in Poland, became not 
only more cruel in spirit but more openly terror- 
istic in form. The whole country was under 
martial law; every official who showed the least 
sympathy with the Poles was removed or pun- 
ished; the Black Hundreds and the fanatical 
priests of the Russo-Greek Church were given an 
absolutely free hand; while at the same time 
Polish organizations of all kinds were ruthlessly 

240 



A SACEILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

crushed. You won't fully realize this unless I 
give you a few illustrations. In Warsaw at that 
time there was a Polish benevolent society whose 
object was to aid poor scholars and students in 
the schools and universities. It had nearly two 
hundred local branches in the various Polish 
provinces, and it was helping thousands of young 
Poles in straitened financial circumstances to get 
an education. When Premier Stolypin came 
into power, and the Black Hundreds raised the 
cry of ^Russia for the Russians, and away with 
the aliens !' this benevolent society, which had no 
political or national aims whatever, was ordered 
to close its doors and go into liquidation. 

"But this is nothing in comparison with other 
things that were done between 1907 and 1910. 
The governor of Wilna forbade Polish actors to 
appear in the theaters of that city ; the governor 
of Grodno would not allow the mourners at the 
funeral of the Polish novelist Orzheshko to carry 
memorial wreaths in the procession; the gov- 
ernor of Piotrkof would not permit the Hygienic 
Society of Lodz to have a section devoted to the 
beautifying of that city, although it had raised 
the sum of fifteen thousand rubles for the pur- 
pose; and the governor of Warsaw suppressed 
the Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment, 

241 



A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

and the Society of Polish Economists, on the 
alleged ground that they were ^prejudicial to 
public order.' 

"You may think that in such cases as these 
governmental repression went to its extreme 
limits ; but far from it ! It had no limits. Ag- 
ricultural societies and consumers' leagues were 
closed in all the Polish provinces, and even such 
manifestly innocent organizations as the Society 
for the Promotion of Rational Amusements, the 
Society for Mutual Help in Case of Death, the 
Pioneers of Cremation, the Warsaw Aviation So- 
ciety, and the Society for the Encouragement of 
Scientific Bee Culture, were all either suppressed 
or prohibited. Poles were not allowed to organ- 
ize or work together for any purpose whatever. 
In certain public fields they were not even per- 
mitted to act separately as individuals. Ma- 
dame Gurskoi, a well known Polish lady, was for- 
bidden to organize a public sale of flowers in 
order to r'aise money for the r'elief of sufferers 
from tuberculosis; the bandmaster of Chensto- 
hova was punished for directing his orchestra to 
play ^God Save Poland'; the Polish Catholic 
priest of Ganich was arrested and fined for hang- 
ing Polish flags from the windoAVS of his church 
on the occasion of a visit from the bishop of the 

242 



A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

diocese ; the Catholic priest Putyato was forbid- 
den to give a public lecture on the catacombs of 
Rome; and even a poor Polish peasant was im- 
prisoned for setting up on his farm a wooden 
cross inscribed : ^From famine, fire and war, 
Good Lord deliver us!" Finally, the governor 
of Podolia closed the Polish School of Refuge in 
Mohilef, and left fifty children — mostly orphans 
— without shelter or care. 

"These are only a few of the hundreds of acts 
of oppression and persecution which made the 
life of the Poles at that time almost insupport- 
able. I refer to them only that you may under- 
stand what the atmosphere and background of 
the fox hunt case were. In a natural and normal 
environment a Russian fox does n't commit sui- 
cide by prearrangement in order that he may help 
a Catholic Pole to commit sacrilege. 

"The story that I am about to tell you is known 
to the Russian courts as the Knobelsdorf case. 
In December, 1909, there was living near the town 
of Mozyr, in the province of Minsk, a Polish 
landed proprietor named Adam Knobelsdorf. 
He was a gray -haired man about seventy years of 
age when I made his acquaintance, but he still 
retained his bodily activity and vigor, kept horses 
and hunting dogs, lived largely in the open air, 

243 



A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

and took great pleasure in field sports of all 
kinds. He was a Catholic^ of course, in religion, 
a man of liberal opinions, and a patriotic Pole; 
but he had shown no more hostility to the Ortho- 
dox Church and the Russian Government than 
was shown by educated Poles generally, and had 
never been engaged, so far as I know, in any 
religious or political controversy. But the 
Black Hundreds and the Orthodox priests hated 
him, because he was at the same time an ino- 
verets [heretic] and an inorodets [alien] and, in 
the opinion of every ^true Russian,' heretics and 
aliens are the natural enemies of God and the 
Czar. 

"A year or two after the defeat of the Russian 
revolutionists and the establishment of the reign 
of terror in the western provinces, this gray- 
haired Polish gentleman, Adam Knobelsdorf, in- 
vited two friends named Zhulkovski and Sham- 
borski, who were spending the Christmas holi- 
days with him, to go on a hunting expedition. 
There had been a recent fall of snow ; the sleigh- 
ing was good, and they proposed to go with guns 
and dogs to a forest twelve or fifteen versts away 
and look for foxes and rabbits. They asked two 
tenant farmers of the neighborhood — the brothers 
Urbanchik— to accompany them, and took along 

244 



A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

as guide a peasant from a nearby village named 
Kuks, and a young servant from the Knobelsdorf 
household whose name I don't now remember. 
There were seven of them in all, and they started 
— two or three on horseback and the rest in sleighs 
— on the second day after Christmas. Four or 
five of the party carried shot-guns, and they were 
accompanied by a small pack of hunting dogs. 
As they drove out of the courtyard, about eight 
o'clock in the morning, Knobelsdorf s youngest 
daughter, who kept house for him, waved good-by 
to him from the veranda with her handkerchief 
and cried: 'Father! Don't hunt until you get 
too tired, and be sure to put your heavy cloak 
around you when you sit down to lunch.' 

^'During the earlier part of the day the hunters 
were not very successful in finding game, and 
after taking lunch beside a frozen brook in the 
woods they agreed to separate, Knobelsdorf, with 
his servant, the guide Kuks, and one of the Ur- 
banchik brothers, taking a westerly course, while 
Zhulkovski, Shamborski, and the other Urban- 
chik brother went to the eastward. In order 
that the two parties might keep in touch it was 
agreed that each should fire a shot occasionally, 
whether any game were found or not. Shortly 
after parting from Knobelsdorf the second party 

245 



A SACKILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

came upon the fresh track of a fox. The dogs 
took it up eagerly and followed it two or three 
versts to the edge of the forest, where it ended at 
a hole in the foundation of an old log church or 
chapel which had been abandoned fifteen or 
twenty years before and had fallen into complete 
decay. One of the dogs wormed his way into the 
hole and under the plank floor of the building. 
His excited barking showed that the fox was 
there, but the animal had apparently taken 
refuge in a place where there was so little room 
that the dog could neither get at him nor drive 
him out. After waiting a while the hunters went 
into the chapel, the door of which was secured 
only by a wooden bar. By the dim light which 
came in through cracks in the boarded windows 
they could see that the building was practically 
dismantled, and that its floor was covered with 
snow, which had blown in through openings in 
the half-decayed roof. Locating the fox approx- 
imately by the sound of the dog's barking, the 
hunters cleared away the snow and tried to 
frighten him out by stamping over his head ; but 
the fox was more afraid of the dog than he was 
of the noise, and would not leave the place where 
he was apparently safe from attack. The hunt- 
ers then went outside the chapel and tried by 

246 



A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

voice and whistle to recall the dog ; but he would 
not come. 

'' ^Let 's go in and take up a plank in the floor/ 
suggested Urbanchik. ^In that way we can at 
least get the dog. We don't want to leave him 
there.' 

"This seemed to be a practical suggestion, and, 
returning to the interior, they removed a plank 
in 'the half-decayed floor, with the intention of 
taking out the dog. In so doing, however, they 
liberated both fox and dog, and the fox came 
first. Acting, probably, on the impulse of the 
moment, Zhulkovski fired at him, and, as the dis- 
tance was short, the charge of rabbit-shot killed 
him on the spot. 

^^Late in the afternoon the hunters reassembled 
at the place where they had left the sleighs, and 
all went home together, none imagining for a mo- 
ment that the shooting of a fox within the walls 
of an old, abandoned, half-ruined chapel was an 
act of sacrilege which might have tragic conse- 
quences. 

"Some days later a Russian peasant who hap- 
pened to be passing the chapel saw the tracks of 
the hunting party in the snow, and, upon going 
into the building to investigate, found blood in 
the place where the fox had been killed. 

247 



A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

Through his report, or through the talk of the 
hunters themselves, who made no secret of the in- 
cident, the sacrilegious violation of an Orthodox 
Russian church by Polish heretics became known 
to the ecclesiastical authorities, and, seeing an 
opportunity to show their power and punish the 
enemies of the true faith, they took it up. They 
met at first with very little encouragement. The 
local police officials made an investigation, but, 
finding no evidence of criminal intent, and re- 
garding the matter as a trivial one, they dis- 
missed the case. Complaint was then made to the 
district commander [zemsM nachalnik], but he 
seemed to be indifferent to it and declared that he 
had no jurisdiction. Then the case was appar- 
ently dropped, but a year or two later a new dis- 
trict commander was appointed, and a second 
complaint was laid before him. He made in- 
quiry into the circumstances, and apparently sat- 
isfied himself that the matter was not important 
enough to deserve serious attention. At any 
rate, he declined to take action upon the evidence 
presented to him. By this time, the incident had 
come to the knowledge of the Black Hundreds, 
and they, supported by the infiuence of Father 
Yakubovich, a fanatical Russian priest who rep- 
resented that district in the Duma, and the en- 

248 



A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

couragement and sympathy of Bishop Michael, 
another intolerant and vindictive ecclesiastic, 
prevailed upon the investigating magistrate and 
the procurator in the district town of Mozyr to 
take the ^sacrilege case' up. This was in the 
latter part of 1909. The ^nationalistic' policy of 
Premier Stolypin and the Czar was then the 
strongest influence in Russia, and local officials 
everywhere were striving to win the approbation 
of the ^higher spheres' by harrying the heretics 
and aliens, and thus showing their devotion to 
the Church and the Crown. The investigating 
magistrate in Mozyr decided that there was evi- 
dence enough to justify prosecution, and the pro- 
curator drew up an indictment charging all of 
the hunters with sacrilegious violation of a 
church." 

"But why all ?" I inquired. "According to your 
story Knobelsdorf and the members of his party 
did not participate in the crime, nor even go near 
the chapel." 

"That 's true," replied the young lawyer, "but 
according to the theory of the prosecution 
Knobelsdorf deliberately planned the act of sac- 
rilege, and organized the hunting party for the 
express purpose of desecrating a Russian place 
of worship." 

249 



A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

"But that^s still more preposterous/' I said. 
"The hunters were led to the chapel by the track 
of a fox. How could Knobelsdorf know in ad- 
vance that a fox on that particular day would 
run under that particular building?" 

"He could n't/' replied the lawyer, "unless he 
had an understanding with the fox. But the 
priests avoided that difficulty by contending that 
although the fox was not a particeps criminiSy he 
did, nevertheless, give Knobelsdorf an opportun- 
ity to commit sacrilege by digging his hole under 
the floor of that particular building. Their the- 
ory was that Knobelsdorf, who lived fifteen versts 
from the chapel, discovered in some way that a 
fox had a hole under it. This suggested to him 
the idea that he might show his contempt for 
the Russians and their religion by organizing a 
hunting party, breaking into the chapel, tearing 
up the floor, digging out the fox, and shooting 
him in the very place where Orthodox believers 
had knelt, prayed and worshiped. You see, the 
priests had to charge premeditation and conspir- 
acy in order to implicate Knobelsdorf at all, be- 
cause he was not with the party that entered the 
chapel; he was chasing rabbits three or four 
versts away. But, besides that, Russian law 
makes a discrimination between crimes com- 

250 



A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

mitted thoughtlessly, or inadvertently, and 
crimes committed with deliberate intention. 
For the latter the punishment is much more se- 
vere, and the priests and the Black Hundreds did 
not intend that the aliens and heretics should be 
let off with a fine or a few days' imprisonment." 

"Were all of the hunting party Poles and Cath- 
olics ?'' I inquired. 

"No,'' he replied; "two of them — the servant 
and the guide — were Orthodox White Russian 
peasants, who would not be likely to enter into a 
conspiracy to dishonor their own religion. But 
that didn't make any difference. The priests 
and the Black Hundreds were ready to sacrifice 
two Orthodox believers, if necessary, in order to 
strike successfully at five heretical Poles ; so they 
accused them all. 

"With the indictment and arrest of Knobels- 
dorf and his companions my connection with the 
story begins. I was then only an assistant advo- 
cate [pomoshnik prisazhni poverenni] but I 
helped to prepare the defense. None of us 
thought at that time that the case could possibly 
have serious consequences. It seemed perfectly 
evident that there was neither premeditation nor 
conspiracy, and that the shooting of the fox in 
the old, abandoned, half-ruined chapel was the 

251 



X SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

result partly of accident, and partly of thought- 
lessness and excitement. But we soon discov- 
ered that there was a determination on the part 
of priests and Court to convict the prisoners of 
premeditated sacrilege without reference to facts 
or probabilities. 

"The trial, which began in the Minsk Circuit 
Court at Mozyr on the 2nd of June, 1910, was 
held before a jury, but with closed doors. Five 
Russian priests were present, ostensibly as wit- 
nesses; but the application of a Polish Catholic 
priest for admission was denied. The public, of 
course, was excluded, with the exception of three 
or four near relatives of the accused. The pro- 
curator was assisted by B. V. Mkolski, a Black 
Hundred advocate from St. Petersburg, who had 
a reputation for oratory and who was supposed 
to represent particularly the ecclesiastical 
authorities of the diocese. The whole case 
turned, of course, on the interpretation given to 
the facts. Zhulkovski, Shamborski, and Urban- 
chik admitted the killing of the fox in the chapel, 
but said that it was an impulsive and unpremed- 
itated act, and that the chapel seemed to them to 
be an abandoned and half-ruined building which 
had no more sacredness than the forest around it. 
Knobelsdorf and his companions declared that 

252 



A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

they were several versts away when the other 
party came upon the fox tracks, and that they 
knew nothing of the killing until they were in- 
formed of it after the two parties had come to- 
gether. The procurator, on the other hand, con- 
tended that Knobelsdorf and his Catholic asso- 
ciates had artfully contrived the whole scheme 
six months prior to its execution, with the delib- 
erate intention of desecrating an Orthodox place 
of worship and thus showing their contempt for 
the true faith. The heretics, he said, not only 
killed the fox in the very shadow of God's altar, 
but pierced with twenty-two shot-holes a portrait 
of the Savior which was hanging on the wall. He 
admitted that the chapel was old and somewhat 
out of repair, but he denied that it had been aban- 
doned. At his request, the jurors were taken to 
the sacred edifice, and there were shown not only 
the pierced portrait of the Savior, but a cross and 
a copy of the New Testament which were lying 
on the altar. These things were supposed to 
prove that the chapel was at least in occasional 
use as a place of worship. 

"We found, some weeks later, a Russian peas- 
ant who affirmed under oath that the cross and 
the New Testament were placed on the altar just 
before the inspection, and that he accompanied 

253 



A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

the priest who carried them there. Unfortu- 
nately we did not get this testimony in time to 
use it at the trial. I have no doubt myself that 
the pierced portrait of the Savior was also manu- 
factured and put in place in order to make an 
impression on the devout peasant jury, because 
shot fired at a fox on the floor could not possibly 
pierce a canvas portrait hanging at a height of 
six feet against the wall. 

"I need not go further into the details of the 
trial. Nikolski, the oratorical advocate from St. 
Petersburg, wept, beat his breast, and implored 
the jury to punish men who were capable of 
desecrating God's altar and firing shot into the 
face of the blessed Redeemer, while the Presiding 
Judge, after ruling strongly against the defense 
at every opportunity, closed his charge to the 
jury in these words : 

" ^If, in spite of all these proofs, you return a 
verdict of acquittal, it will show that this Court 
disregards the intention of the Supreme Author- 
ity' [the Czar] , Vhich was to create a tribunal of 
equity and justice. A court that showed such 
disrespect would not only be a farce, but would 
be injurious and dangerous, because it would 
increase by its verdicts of acquittal the num- 
ber of unpunished crimes.' 

254 



A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

"In view of the biased tendency of the whole 
charge, and the flagrant illegality of its conclud- 
ing sentences, counsel for the defense took formal 
exceptions and requested the Presiding Judge to 
note them in a protocol as the ground for a pos- 
sible appeal. They were asked to put their ob- 
jections in writing, and they did so. 

"Half an hour later the jury came in with a 
verdict which affirmed the guilt of all the accused 
without exception. The Court thereupon sen- 
tenced five of them to penal servitude : Knobels- 
dorf for eight years, and the others for periods 
ranging from two to six years, with deprivation 
of all civil rights, and forced colonization at the 
expiration of their respective penal terms. 
Mercy was shown only to the two Orthodox 
White Russian peasants, who were let off with 
two years of simple imprisonment. 

"Counsel for the condemned men carried the 
case at once to the Governing Senate [the Rus- 
sian Supreme Court], where it was heard, with 
closed doors, on the 12th of August, 1910.^ It 

1 Closing the doors to reporters and the public at the 
hearing of a case in the Senate on appeal is very excep- 
tional. It has occurred only twice in recent years. The 
only outsiders admitted at the hearing of the Knobelsdorf 
appeal were Bishop Michael, the intolerant ecclesiastic from 
the Minsk diocese, and a representative from the "Novoe 

255 



A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

was tlien discovered that the Presiding Judge of 
the Minsk Circuit Court had omitted from the 
record both his charge to the jury and the excep- 
tions of the defense based upon it. The Senate 
therefore dismissed the appeal on the ground 
that there was nothing in the record to show ille- 
gality in the lower court's procedure. 

"Knobelsdorf s daughter then wrote a piteous 
letter to Leo Belmont, editor of the Wolni Slovo, 
of Warsaw, begging him to intercede in her 
father's behalf. Belmont, in turn, addressed a 
letter to Premier Stolypin, requesting the latter 
to investigate the case, and to support any appli- 
cation that might be made to the Czar for par- 
don. No notice was ever taken of the communi- 
cation. It was then that I finally decided to get 
out of Russia. It did not seem to me to be a field 
in which a Polish lawyer was likely to succeed or 
be happy. The Knobelsdorf case was not a mis- 
carriage of justice in the ordinary meaning of 
those words; it was a prostitution of justice in 
the interest of religious fanaticism and political 
hatred. I did not care to practise my profession 
or even to live any longer in a country where such 
^nightmare cases' are not infrequent, and where 

Vremya," the well-known reactionary journal in St. Peters- 
burg.— G. K. 

256 



A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 

even the courts are used by the ruling class and 
the dominant Church as a. means of sending into 
penal servitude those whom they choose to re- 
gard as enemies of God and the Czar." ^ 

2 I have taken no liberties with the essential facts of this 
story. The whole narrative is true and all of the names 
are real. On the 26th of September, 1913 — only four 
months ago — his Majesty the Czar, in consideration of 
Knobelsdorf's age and health, graciously remitted the unex- 
pired part of his penal term. He was then nearly seventy- 
four years of age, and had been a hard-labor convict about 
three years and a half (The "Reitch," St. Petersburg, Sep- 
tember 27, 1913). In commenting upon the prisoner's re- 
lease, the eminent jurist and publicist Vladimir Nabokof 
said in a signed article : "The Knobelsdorf case makes one 
of the blackest and most melancholy pages in the history of 
Russian justice." (The "Reitch," St. Petersburg, October 
5, 1913.)— G. K. 



257 



NAPOLEONDEE 



IX 
NAPOLEONDER ^ 

^ A LEGEND OF THE RUSSIAN PEASANTS 

Transcribed by Alexander Amphiteatrof 
Translated by George Kennan 

LONG ago — but not so very long ago, our 
grandfathers remember it — the Lord God 
wanted to punish the people of the world for 
their wickedness. So he began to think how and 
by what means he could punish them, and he 
called a council of his angels and archangels to 
talk about it. Says the archangel Michael to the 
Lord God, ^^Shake them up, the recreants, with 
an earthquake.'' 

"We've tried that," says the Lord God. 
"Once upon a time we jolted to pieces Sodom and 
Gomorrah, but it didn't teach them anything. 
Since then pretty much all the towns have be- 
come Sodoms and Gomorrahs." 

1 The Russian peasant's name for Napoleon Bonaparte. 
The final syllable, "der," has perhaps been added because to 
the ear of the peasant "Napoleon" sounds clipped and in- 
complete, as "Alexan" would sound to us without the "der." 

261 



NAPOLEONDER 

"How about famine?" says the archangel 
Gabriel. 

"It would be too bad for the babies/' replies the 
Lord God. "Famine would kill the babies ; and, 
besides that, the cattle must have food — they 're 
not to blame." 

"Drown them with a flood/' suggests Raphael. 

"Clean impossible !" says the Lord God. "Be- 
cause, in the first place, I took an oath once that 
there should be no more floods, and I set the rain- 
bow in the sky for an assurance. In the second 
place, the rascally sinners have become cunning ; 
they '11 get on steamboats and sail all over the 
flood." 

Then all the archangels were perplexed and be- 
gan to screw about in their seats, trying to invent 
or think of some calamity that would bring the 
wicked human race to its senses and stir up its 
conscience. But they had been accustomed, time 
out of mind, to do good rather than evil ; they had 
forgotten all about the wickedness of the world, 
and they could n't think of a single thing that 
would be of any use. 

Then suddenly up comes Ivan-angel, a simple- 
minded soul whom the Lord God had appointed 
to look after the Russian muzhiks. He comes up 
and reports : "Lord, Satan is outside there, ask- 

262 



NAPOLEONDER 

ing for you. He does n't dare to come in, because 
he smells bad; ^ so he 's waiting in the entry." 

Then the Lord God was rejoiced. "Call Satan 
in!" he ordered. "I know that rogue perfectly 
well, and he has come in the very nick of time. A 
scamp like that will be sure to think of some- 
thing." 

Satan came in. His face was as black as 
tanned calfskin, his voice was hoarse, and a long 
tail hung down from under his overcoat. 

"If you so order," he says, "I '11 distribute your 
calamities for you with my own hands." 

"Go ahead with your distribution," says the 
Lord God ; "nobody shall hinder you." 

"Will you permit me," Satan says, "to bring 
about an invasion of foreigners?" 

The Lord God shook his finger at Satan and 
cried: "Is that all you can think of? And you 
so wise !" 

"Excuse me," Satan says. "Why does n't my 
plan show wisdom?" 

"Because," replies the Lord God, "you propose 
to afflict the people with war, and war is just 
what they want. They 're all the time fighting 
among themselves, one people with another, and 
that 's the very thing I want to punish them for." 

2 That is, with the sulphurous odor of hell. — G. K, 

263 



NAPOLEONDER 

"Yes/' says Satan, "they're greedy for war, 
but that 's only because they have never yet seen 
a real warrior. Send them a regular conqueror, 
and they '11 soon drop their tails between their 
legs and cry, ^Have mercy, Lord — save us from 
the man of blood !' " 

The Lord God was surprised. "Why do you 
say, my little brother, that the people have never 
seen a real warrior? The Czar Herod was a con- 
queror; the Czar Alexander subdued a wonder- 
ful lot of people; Ivan-Czar destroyed Kazan; 
Mamai-Czar, the furious, came with all his 
hordes ; and the Czar Peter, and the great fighter 
Anika — how many more conquerors do you 
want?" 

"I want Napoleonder," says Satan. 

"Napoleonder !" cries the Lord God. "Who's 
he? Where did he come from?" 

"He 's a certain little man," Satan says, "whO' 
may not be wise enough to hurt, but he 's terribly 
fierce in his habits." 

The Lord God said to the archangel Gabriel — 
"Look in the Book of Life, Gabriel, and see if 
we've got Naj)oleonder written down." 

The archangel looked and looked, but he 
could n't look up any such person. 

"There is n't any kind of Napoleonder in the 

264 



NAPOLEONDER 

Book," he says. "Satan is a liar. We have n't 
got Napoleonder written down anywhere." 

Then Satan replies: "It isn't strange that 
you can't find Napoleonder in the Book of Life, 
because you write in that Book only the names of 
those who were born of human fathers and 
mothers, and who have navels. Napoleonder 
never had a father or a mother, and, moreover, 
he has n't any navel— and that 's so surprising 
that you might exhibit him, for money." 

The Lord God was greatly astonished. "How 
did your Napoleonder ever get into the world?" 

he says. 

"In this way," Satan replies. "I made him, 
as a doll, just for amusement, out of sand. At 
that very time, you. Lord, happened to be wash- 
ing your holy face, and, not being careful, you let 
a few drops of the water of life splash over. 
They fell from heaven right exactly on Napo- 
leonder's head, and he immediately took breath 
and became a man. He is living now, not very 
near nor very far away, on the island of Buan, 
in the middle of the ocean-sea. There is a little 
less than a verst of land in the island, and Napo- 
leonder lives there and watches geese. Night 
and day he looks after the geese, without eating, 
or drinking, or sleeping, or smoking; and his 

265 



NAPOLEONDER 

only thought is — how to conquer the whole 
world.'' 

The Lord God thought and thought, and then 
he ordered, "Bring him to me/' 

Satan at once brought Napoleonder into the 
bright heaven. The Lord God looked at him, and 
saw that he was a military man with shining but- 
tons. 

"I have heard, Napoleonder," says the Lord 
God, "that you want to conquer the whole 
world." 

"Exactly so," replies Napoleonder; "that's 
what I want very much to do." 

"And have you thought," says the Lord God, 
"that when you go forth to conquer you will 
crush many peoples and shed rivers of blood?" 

"That's all the same to me," says Napoleon- 
der ; "the important thing for me is — how can I 
subdue the whole world?" 

"And will you not feel pity for the killed, the 
wounded, the burned, the ruined, and the dead?" 

"Not in the least," says Napoleonder. "Why 
should I feel pity? I don't like pity. So far as 
I can remember, I was never sorry for anybody 
or anything in my life, and I never shall be." 

Then the Lord God turns to the angels and 
says, "Messrs. Angels, this seems to be the very 

266 



NAPOLEONDER 

fellow for our business." Then, to Napoleonder, 
he says : ^^Satan was perfectly right. You are 
worthy to be the instrument of my wrath, be- 
cause a pitiless conqueror is worse than earth- 
quake, famine, or deluge. Go back to the earth, 
Napoleonder ; I turn over to you the whole world, 
and through you the whole world shall be pun- 
ished.'' 

Napoleonder says : ^^Give me armies and 
luck, and I '11 do my best." 

Then the Lord God says, "Armies you shall 
have, and luck you shall have ; and so long as you 
are merciless, you shall never be defeated in bat- 
tle ; but remember that the moment you begin to 
feel sorry for the shedding of blood— -of your own 
people or of others — that moment your power 
will end. From that moment your enemies will 
defeat you, and you shall finally be made a pris- 
oner, be put into chains, and be sent back to Buan 
Island to watch geese. Do you understand?" 

"Exactly so," says Napoleonder; "I under- 
stand, and I will obey. I shall never feel pity." 

Then the angels and the archangels began to 
say to God : "Lord, why have you laid upon him 
such a frightful command? If he goes forth so, 
without mercy, he will kill every living soul on 
earth — he will leave none for seed." 

267 



NAPOLEONDER 

"Be silent!" replied the Lord God. "He will 
not conquer long. He is altogether too brave; 
because he fears neither others nor himself. He 
thinks he will keep from pity, and does not know 
that pity, in the human heart, is stronger than all 
else, and that not a man living is wholly without 
it.'' 

"But," the archangels say, "he is not a man — 
he is made of sand." 

The Lord God replies : "Then you think he 
did n't receive a soul, when my water of life fell 
on his head?" 

Napoleonder gathered together a great army, 
speaking twelve languages, and went forth to 
war. He conquered the Germans, he conquered 
the Turks, he subdued the Swedes and the Poles. 
He reaped as he marched, and left bare the coun- 
try through which he passed. And all the time 
he remembers the condition of success — pity for 
none. He cuts off heads, burns villages, out- 
rages women, and tramples children under his 
horses' hoofs. He desolates the whole Moham- 
medan kingdom — and still he is not sated. 
Finally he marches on a Christian country — on 
Holy Russia. 

In Russia, then, the Czar was Alexander the 
Blessed — the same Czar who stands now on the 

268 



NAPOLEONDER 

top of tlie column in Petersburg-town and blesses 
the people with a cross, and that's why he is 
called ^^the Blessed." 

When he saw Napoleonder marching against 
him with twelve languages, Alexander the 
Blessed felt that the end of Russia was near. 
He called together his generals and field-marshals 
and said to them, "Messrs. Generals and Field- 
marshals, how can I check this Napoleonder? 
He is pressing us terribly hard." 

The generals and field-marshals reply, "We 
can't do anything, your Majesty, to stop Na- 
poleonder, because God has given him a 
word." 

"What kind of a word?" 

"This kind — ^Bonaparty.' " 

"But what does ^Bonaparty' mean, and why is 
a single word so terrible?" 

"It means, your Majesty, six hundred and 
sixty-six — the number of the Beast ^ — and it is 
terrible because when Napoleonder sees, in a bat- 
tle, that the enemy is very brave, that his own 
strength is not enough, and that his own men are 
falling fast,^ he immediately conjures with this 

3 A reference to the Beast of the Apocalypse. "The num- 
ber of the beast is the number of a man ; and his number is 
Six hundred threescore and six." Rev. xiii, 18. 

4 Literally, "lying down with their bones." 

269 



NAPOLEONDER 

same word, 'Bonaparty/ and at that instant — as 
soon as the word is pronounced — all the soldiers 
that have ever served under him and have died 
for him on the field of battle come back from be- 
yond the grave. He leads them afresh against 
the enemy, as if they were alive, and nothing can 
stand against them, because they are a ghostly 
force, not an army of this world." 

Alexander the Blessed grew sad; but, after 
thinking a moment, he said : "Messrs. Generals 
and Field-marshals, we Russians are a people of 
more than ordinary courage. We have fought 
with all nations, and never yet, before any of 
them, have we laid our faces in the dust. If God 
has brought us, at last, to fight with corpses — 
His holy will be done! We will go against the 
dead !'' 

So he led his army to the field of Kulikova, 
and there waited for the miscreant Napoleonder. 
And soon afterward Napoleonder, the evil one, 
sends him an envoy with a paper saying, "Sub- 
mit, Alexander Blagoslovenni, and I will show 
you favor above all others." 

But Alexander the Blessed was a proud man, 
who held fast his self-respect. He would not 
speak to the envoy, but he took the paper that the 
envoy had brought and drew on it an insulting 

270 



NAPOLEONDER 

picture, witli the words, "Is this what you want?" 
and sent it back to Napoleonder. 

Then they fought and slashed one another on 
the field of Kulikova, and, in a short time or a 
long time, our men began to overcome the forces 
of the enemy. One by one they shot or cut down 
all of Napoleonder's field-marshals, and finally 
dr6w near to Napoleonder himself. 

"Your time has come !'' they cry to him. "Sur- 
render !'' 

But the villain sits there on his horse, rolling 
his goggle eyes like an owl, and grinning. 

"Wait a minute,'' he says coolly. "Don't be in 
too big a hurry. A tale is short in telling, but 
the deed is long a-doing." 

Then he pronounces his conjuring word, 
"Bonaparty" — six hundred and sixty-six — the 
number of the Beast. 

Instantly there is a great rushing sound, and 
the earth is shaken as if by an earthquake. Our 
soldiers look — and drop their hands. In all 
parts of the field appear threatening battalions, 
with bayonets shining in the sun, torn flags wav- 
ing over terrible hats of fur, and tramp ! tramp ! 
tramp ! on come the thousands of phantom men, 
with faces yellow as camomile, and empty holes 
under their bushy eyebrows. 

271 



NAPOLEONDER 

Alexander, the Blessed Czar, was stricken with 
terror. Terror-stricken were all his generals and 
field-marshals. Terror-stricken also was the 
whole Russian army. Shaking w^ith fear, they 
wavered at the advance of the dead, gave way 
suddenly in a panic, and finally fled in whatever 
direction their eyes happened to look. 

The brigand Napoleonder sat on his horse, 
holding his sides with laughter, and shouted, 
"Aha! My old men are not to your taste! I 
thought so ! This is n't like playing knuckle- 
bones with children and old women ! Well, then, 
my honorable Messrs. Dead Men, I have never yet 
felt pity for any one, and you needn't show 
mercy to my enemies. Deal with them after your 
own fashion.'' 

"As long as it is so," replied the corpse-soldiers, 
"we are your faithful servants always." 

Our men fled from Kulikova-field to Pultava- 
field ; from Pultava-field to the famous still-water 
Don; and from the peaceful Don to the field of 
Borodino, under the very walls of Mother Mos- 
cow. And as our men came to these fields, one 
after another, they turned their faces again and 
again toward Napoleonder, and fought him with 
such fierceness that the brigand himself was de- 

272 



NAPOLEONDEE 

lighted with them. "God save us!" he ex- 
claimed; "what soldiers these Russians are! I 
have not seen such men in any other country." 

But^ in spite of the bravery of our troops, we 
were unable to stop Napoleonder's march; be- 
cause we had no word with which to meet his 
word. In every battle we pound him, and drive 
him back, and get him in a slip-noose; but just as 
we are going to draw it tight and catch him, the 
filthy, idolatrous thief bethinks himself and 
shouts "Bonaparty !" Then the dead men crawl 
out of their graves in full uniform, set their teeth, 
&x their eyes upon their officers, and charge! 
And where they pass, the grass withers and the 
stones crack. And our men are so terrified by 
these unclean bodies that they can't fight against 
them at all. As soon as they hear that accursed 
word "Bonaparty," and see the big fur hats and 
the yellow faces of the dead men, they throw 
down their guns and rush into the woods to hide. 

"Say what you will, Alexander Blagoslovenni," 
they cry, "for corpses we are not prepared." 

Alexander the Blessed reproached his men, and 
said, "Wait a little, brothers, before you run 
away. Let 's exert ourselves a little more. Dog 
that he is, he can't beat us always. God has set 
a limit for him somewhere. To-day is his, to- 

273 



NAPOLEONDER 

morrow may be his, but after a. while the luck 
perhaps will turn.'^ 

Then he went to the old hermit-monks in the 
caves of Kiev and on the island of Valaam, and 
bowed himself at the feet of all the archiman- 
drites and metropolitans, saying, ^Tray for us, 
Holy Fathers, and beseech the Lord God to turn 
away his wrath ; because we have n't strength 
enough to defend you from this Napoleonder.'' 

Then the old hermit-monks and the archiman- 
drites and the metropolitans all prayed, with 
tears in their eyes, to the Lord God, and pros- 
trated themselves until their knees were all black 
and blue and there were big bumps on their fore- 
heads. With tearful eyes, the whole Russian 
people, too, from the Czar to the last beggar, 
prayed God for mercy and help. And they took 
the sacred icon of the Holy Mother of God of 
Smolensk, the pleader for the grief -stricken, and 
carried it to the famous field of Borodino, and, 
bowing down before it, with tearful eyes, they 
cried, "O Most Holy Mother of God, thou art our 
life and our hope ! Have mercy on us, and inter- 
cede for us soon." 

And down the dark face of the icon, from un- 
der the setting of pearls in the silver frame, 

274 



NAPOLEONDER 

trickled big tears. And all the army and all 
God's people saw the sacred icon crying. It was 
a terrible thing to see, but it was comforting. 

Then the Lord God heard the wail of the Rus- 
sian people and the prayers of the Holy Virgin, 
the Mother of God of Smolensk, and he cried out 
to the angels and the archangels, "The hour of 
my wrath has passed. The people have suffered 
enough for their sins and have repented of their 
wickedness. Napoleonder has destroyed nations 
enough. It 's time for him to learn mercy. 
Who of you, my servants, will go down to the 
earth — who will undertake the great work of 
softening the conqueror's heart?" 

The older angels and the archangels did n't 
want to go. "Soften his heart!" they cried. 
"He is made of sand — he has n't any navel — he 
is pitiless — we 're afraid of him !" 

Then Ivan-angel stepped forward and said, 
"I '11 go." 

At that very time Napoleonder had just gained 
a great victory and was riding over the field of 
battle on a greyhound of a horse. He trampled 
with his horse's hoofs on the bodies of the dead, 
without pity or regret, and the only thought in 
his mind was, "As soon as I have done with Rus- 

275 



NAPOLEONDER 

sia, I '11 march against the Chinese and the white 
Arabs; and then I shall have conquered exactly 
the whole world.'' 

But just at that moment he heard some one 
calling "Napoleonder ! O Napoleonder !" He 
looked around, and not far away, under a bush 
on a little mound, he saw a wounded Russian 
soldier, who was beckoning to him with his hand. 
Napoleonder was surprised. What could a 
wounded Russian soldier want of him? He 
turned his horse and rode to the spot. 

"What do you want?" he asked the soldier. 

"I don't want anything of you," the wounded 
soldier replied, "except an answer to one ques- 
tion. Tell me, please, what have you killed me 
for?" 

Napoleonder was still more surprised. In the 
many years of his conquering he had wounded 
and killed a multitude of men ; but he had never 
been asked that question before. And yet this 
Russian soldier did n't look as if he had anything 
more than ordinary intelligence. He was just 
a young, boyish fellow, with light flaxen hair and 
blue eyes — evidently a new recruit from some 
country village. 

"What do you mean — ^killed you for'?" said 
Napoleonder. "I had to kill you. When you 

276 



NAPOLEONDER 

went into the army, did n't you take an oath that 
you would die?'' 

"I know what oath I took, Napoleonder, and 
I 'm not making a fuss about dying ; but you — 
why did you kill me?" 

"Why should n't I kill you," said Napoleonder, 
"when you were the enemy — that is, my foe — 
Gome out to fight me on the field of Borodino?" 

"Cross yourself, Napoleonder !" said the young 
soldier. "How could I be your foe, when there 
has never been any sort of quarrel between us? 
Until you came into our country, and I was 
drafted into the army, I had never even heard of 
you. And here you have killed me — and how 
many more like me !" 

"I killed," said Napoleonder, "because it was 
necessary for me to conquer the world." 

"But what have I got to do with your conquer- 
ing the world?" replied the soldier. "Conquer 
it, if you want to — I don't hinder — ^but why did 
you kill me? Has killing me given you the 
world? The world does n't belong to me. 
You 're not reasonable, brother Napoleonder. 
And is it possible that you really think you can 
conquer the whole world?" 

"I 'm very much of that opinion," replied 
Napoleonder. 

277 



NAPOLEONDER 

The little soldier smiled. "You 're really 
stupid, Napoleonder/' he said. "I 'm sorry for 
you. As if it were possible to conquer the whole 
world !'' 

"I '11 subdue all the kingdoms/' replied Na- 
poleonder, "and put all peoples in chains, and 
then I '11 reign as Czar of all the earth." 

The soldier shook his head. "And God?" he 
inquired. "Will you conquer him?" 

Napoleonder was confused. "No," he finally 
said. "God's will is over us all ; and in the hol- 
low of his hand we live." 

"Then what 's the use of your conquering the 
world?" said the soldier. "God is over all ; there- 
fore the world won't belong to you, but to him. 
And you '11 live just so long as he has patience 
with you, and no longer." 

"I know that as well as you do," said Napole- 
onder. 

"Well, then," replied the soldier, "if you know 
it, why don't you reckon with God?" 

Napoleonder scowled. "Don't say such things 
to me !" he cried. "I 've heard that sancti- 
monious stuff before. "It 's of no use — you can't 
fool me — I don't know any such thing as pity." 

"Indeed!" said the soldier, "is it so? Have a 
care, Napoleonder! You are swaggering too 

278 



NAPOLEONDER 

much. Yon lie when yon say a man can live 
without pity. To have a soul, and to feel com- 
passion, are one and the same thing. You have 
a soul, have n't you?" 

^^Of course I have," replied Napoleonder; "a 
man can't live without a soul." 

^^There! you see!" said the soldier; ^^you have 
a soul and you believe in God. How, then, can 
you say you don't know any such thing as pity? 
You do know! And I believe that at this very 
moment, deep down in your heart, you are mor- 
tally sorry for me ; only you don't want to show 
it. Why, then, did you kill me?" 

Napoleonder suddenly became furious. "May 
the pip seize your tongue, you miscreant! I'll 
show you how much pity I have for you !" And, 
drawing a pistol, Napoleonder shot the wounded 
soldier thr'ough the head. Then, turning to his 
dead men, he said, "Did you see that?" 

"We saw it," they replied, "and as long as it 
is so, we are your faithful servants always." 

Napoleonder rode on. 

At last night comes; and Napoleonder is sit- 
ting alone in his golden tent. His mind is 
troubled, and he can't understand what it is that 
seems to be gnawing at his heart. For years he 
has been at war, and this is the first time such a 

279 



NAPOLEONDER 

thing has happened. Never before has his soul 
been so filled with unrest. And to-morrow morn- 
ing he must begin another battle — the last ter- 
rible fight with the Czar Alexander the Blessed, 
on the field of Borodino. 

^^Akh !" he thinks, "I '11 show them to-morrow 
what a leader I am ! I '11 lift the soldiers of the 
Czar into the air on my lances and trample their 
bodies under the feet of my horses. I '11 make 
the Czar himself a prisoner, and I '11 kill or scat- 
ter the whole Russian people." 

But a voice seemed to whisper in his ear, "And 
why? why?" 

"I know that trick," he thought. "It 's that 
same wounded soldier again. All right. I won't 
give in to him. ^Why? Why?' As if I knew 
why ! Perhaps if I knew why, I should n't make 
war." 

He lay down on his bed; but hardly had he 
closed his eyes when he saw, by his bedside, the 
wounded soldier — young, fair-faced, blond- 
haired, with just the first faint shadow of a 
mustache. His forehead was pale, his lips were 
livid, his blue eyes were dim, and in his left 
temple there was a round black hole made by the 
bullet from his, Napoleonder's, pistol. And the 

280 



NAPOLEONDER 

ghastly figure seemed to ask again, ^'Why did you 
kill me?'' 

Napoleonder turns over and over, from side to 
side, in Ms bed. He sees that it 's a bad business. 
He can't get rid of that soldier. And, more than 
all, he wonders at himself. ^What an extraor- 
dinary occurrence !" he thinks. "I 've killed mil- 
lions of people, of all countries and nations, with- 
out the least misgiving; and now, suddenly, one 
miserable soldier comes and throws all my ideas 
into a tangle !" 

Finally Napoleonder got up; but the confine- 
ment of his golden tent seemed oppressive. He 
went out into the open air, mounted his horse, 
and rode away to the place where he had shot to 
death the vexatious soldier. 

"I 've heard," he said to himself, "that when a 
dead man appears in a vision, it is necessary to 
sprinkle earth on the eyes of the corpse. Then 
he'll lie quiet." 

Napoleonder rides on. The moon is shining 
brightly, and the bodies of the dead are lying on 
the battlefield in heaps. Everywhere he sees cor- 
ruption and smells corruption. 

"And all these," he thought, "I have killed." 

And, wonderful to say, it seems to him as if all 

281 



NAPOLEONDER 

the dead men have the same face — a young face 
with blue eyes, and blond hair, and the faint 
shadow of a mustache — and they all seem to be 
looking at him with kindly, pitying eyes, and 
their bloodless lips move, just a little, as they 
ask, without anger or reproach, ^^Why? Why?" 

Napoleonder felt a dull, heavy pressure at his 
heart. He had not spirit enough left to go to the 
little mound where the body of the dead soldier 
lay, so he turned his horse and rode back to his 
tent; and every corpse that he passed seemed to 
say, "Why? Why?" 

He felt no longer the desire to ride at a gallop 
over the dead bodies of the Russian soldiers. On 
the contrary, he picked his way among them care- 
fully, riding respectfully around the remains of 
every man who had died with honor on that field 
of blood ; and now and then he even crossed him- 
self and said : "Akh, that one ought to have lived ! 
What a fine fellow that one was ! He must have 
fought with splendid courage. And I killed him 
—why?" 

The great conqueror never noticed that his 
heart was growing softer and warmer, but so it 
was. He pitied his dead enemies at last, and the 
evil spirit went away from him, and left him in 
all respects like other people. 

282 



NAPOLEONDER 

The next day came the battle. Napoleonder 
led his forces, cloud upon cloud, to the field of 
Borodino; but he was shaking, as if in a chill. 
His generals and field-marshals looked at him 
and were filled with dismay. 

'^You ought to take a drink of vodka, Napo- 
leonder,'' they say; "you don't look like your- 
self." 

When the Russian troops attacked the hordes 
of Napoleonder, on the field of Borodino, the 
soldiers of the great conqueror at once gave way. 

"It's a bad business, Napoleonder," the gen- 
erals and field-marshals say. "For some reason 
the Russians are fighting harder to-day than ever. 
You 'd better call out your dead men." 

Napoleonder shouted at the top of his voice, 
"Bonaparty!" — six hundred and sixty-six! — the 
number of the Beast. But, cry as he would, he 
only frightened the jackdaws. The dead men 
did n't come out of their graves, nor answer his 
call. And Napoleonder was left on the field of 
Borodino alone. All his generals and field-mar- 
shals had fled, and he sat there alone on his horse, 
shouting, "Bonaparty ! Bonaparty !" 

Then suddenly there appeared beside him the 
smooth-faced, blue-eyed, fair-haired Russian re- 
cruit whom he had killed the day before. And 

283 



NAPOLEONDER 

the young soldier said: "It's useless to shout, 
Napoleonder. Nobody will come. Yesterday 
you felt sorry for me and for my dead brothers, 
and because of your pity your corpse-soldiers no 
longer come at your call. Your power over them 
is gone." 

Then Napoleonder began to weep and sob, and 
cried out, "You have ruined me, you wretched, 
miserable soldier!'' 

But the soldier (who was Ivan-angel, and not a 
soldier at all) replied: "I have not ruined you, 
Napoleonder ; I have saved you. If you had gone 
on in your merciless, pitiless course, there would 
have been no forgiveness for you, either in this 
life or in the life to come. Now God has given 
you time for repentance. In this world you shall 
be punished, but there, beyond, if you repent of 
your sins, you shall be forgiven." 

And the angel vanished. 

Then our Don Cossacks fell on Napoleonder, 
dragged him from his horse, and took him to 
Alexander the Blessed. Some said : "Napoleon- 
der ought to be shot !" Others cried : "Send him 
to Siberia!" But the Lord God softened the 
heart of Alexander the Blessed, and the merciful 
Czar would not allow Napoleonder to be shot or 
sent to Siberia. He ordered that the great con- 

284 



NAPOLEONDER 

queror be put into an iron cage, and be carried 
around and exhibited to the people at country 
fairs. So Napoleonder was carried from one fair 
to another for a period of thirty summers and 
three years— until he had grown quite old. 
Then, when he was an old man, they sent him to 
the island of Buan to watch geese. 



285 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 



X 

THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

IN the extreme northern part of the Chinese 
Empire, about one thousand miles from the 
city of Pekin and an equal distance from the 
coast of the Pacific, there is a wild, mountainous, 
densely wooded, and almost trackless region, 
known to Chinese geographers as Khelun-tsan. 
It forms a part of the great frontier province of 
Manchuria, and lies, somewhat in the shape of 
an equilateral triangle, between the rivers Argun 
and Amur, which separate it from eastern 
Siberia on the north, and the rivers Ur-son, 
Khalga-gol, and Sungari, which bound it on 
the south. A post-road leads along its southern 
frontier from Khailar to the capital town of 
Tsitsikhar, and there is a fringe of Cossack sta- 
tions and Manchu pickets on the rivers Argun 
and Amur, which form the other two sides of the 
triangle; but the vast region bounded by these 
thin lines of settlement is a wilderness of forests 
and mountains, traversed only by Tungus or 

289 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

Manchu hunters, and as little known to the Chi- 
nese who own it as to the Russians whose terri- 
tory it adjoins. Near the apex of this triangle, 
between two lateral spurs of the Great Khingan 
Mountains, there is a deep, wooded valley called 
the Zhelta, through which flows a shallow tribu- 
tary of the small Manchurian river Albazikha. 
It is an insignificant ravine, only ten or fifteen 
miles in length, and, from a topographical point 
of view, it does not differ in any essential respect 
from thousands of other nameless ravines which 
lie among the wooded mountains of Manchuria 
and the Trans-Baikal ; but it has a distinction not 
based upon topography and not dependent upon 
geographical situation, — a distinction arising 
out of its relation to human interests and human 
institutions. In this wild, lonely valley was 
born, a little more than twelve years ago, the first 
and only true republic that ever existed on the 
continent of Asia, and its birthplace was a Tun- 
gus grave. 

In the year 1883 a Tungus hunter and trapper 
called Vanka, who spent most of his life roaming 
through the forests and over the mountains of 
Manchuria and Transbaikalia, came, with a 
bundle of furs, to the shop of a merchant named 
Seredkin, in the little Cossack post of Ignashina 

290 



THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 

on the upper Amur, and reported that while dig- 
ging a grave in the valley of the Zhelta for his 
mother, who had died during a temporary stay 
there, he had found, at a depth of three or four 
feet in the gravelly soil, a number of small flakes 
and nuggets of yellow metal which had the ap- 
pearance of gold. He wished the merchant to 
examine them and tell him what they were worth. 
Seredkin looked at the specimens, subjected them 
to a few simple tests, and soon satisfied himself 
that gold they were. He purchased them at a 
good price, promised Vanka a suitable reward if 
he would act as guide to the place where they 
were found, and immediately made preparations 
to equip and send into Manchuria a small pros- 
pecting party, under the direction of a trusted 
and experienced clerk named Lebedkin. Two or 
three days later this party crossed the Amur, 
marched eighteen or twenty miles through the 
forest to the valley of the Zhelta, and began dig- 
ging a short distance from the grave in which the 
Tungus had buried his mother and out of which 
he had taken the gold. From the very first pan; 
ful of earth washed they obtained a quarter of a 
teaspoonful or more of the precious dust, and the 
deeper they sank their prospecting pits the richer 
the gravel became. In a dozen or more places, 

291 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

and at various depths ranging from ten to four- 
teen feet, they found gold in amazing quantities ; 
and Lebedkin, the chief of the party, became so 
excited — not to say crazed — by the vision of sud- 
den wealth that he drank himself to the verge of 
delirium tremens, and was finally carried back to 
Ignashina in a state of alcoholic coma and com- 
plete physical collapse. The laborers who had 
been digging under his direction thereupon threw 
off their allegiance tO' their employer, formed 
themselves into an artel,^ and proceeded to pros- 
pect and mine on their own joint account and 
for their own common benefit. 

Seredkin tried to keep the matter a secret 
while he organized and equipped a second party ; 
but the news of the discovery of a wonderfully 
rich gold placer on Chinese territory, only fifteen 
or twenty miles from the Amur, was too impor- 
tant and toO' exciting to be either suppressed or 
concealed. From the village of Ignashina it was 
carried to the neighboring Cossack post of 
Pokrofka, from there to Albazin, from Albazin 

1 An artel is a Russian form of labor union, in which from 
six to fifty or more men unite to do a particular piece of 
work, or to labor together for a certain specified time. It is 
virtually a small joint stock company, whose members share 
equally in the work, expenses, and profits of the enterprise 
in which they are engaged. 

292 



THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 

to Blagoveshcliinsk, and tlien.ce to all parts of 
eastern Siberia. Before the end of the spring of 
1884 gold-seekers bound for the new Eldorado 
were pouring into Ignashina at the rate of one 
hundred and fifty a day, and the little Cossack 
settlement was suddenly transformed into a 
pandemonium of noise, tumult, drunkenness, 
fighting, and wild, feverish excitement. In vain 
the Russian authorities at Chita and Blagovesh- 
chinsk tried to stop the frenzied rush of miners 
and prospectors into Manchuria, first by threat- 
ening them with arrest, and then by forbidding 
station-masters on the government post-roads to 
furnish them with transportation. The tide of 
migration could no more be stopped in this way 
than the current of the Amur could be arrested 
or diverted by means of a paper dam. The ex- 
cited gold-seekers paid no attention whatever to 
official proclamations or warnings, and if they 
could not obtain horses and vehicles at the post- 
stations, they hired telegas ^ from the muzhiks, 
or canoes from the Amur Cossacks, and came into 
Ignashina, by land and by water, in ever increas- 
ing numbers. As fast as they could obtain food 
and equipment they crossed the Amur in skiffs, 

2 Small, springless, four-wheeled carts, drawn usually by 
a single horse. 

293 



THE ZHELTUGA EEPUBLIC 

shouldered their picks, shovels, and bread-bags, 
and plunged on foot into the wild, gloomy forests 
of Manchuria. Before the 1st of September, 
1884, the Tungus grave in the valley of the Zhelta 
was surrounded by the tents and log huts of at 
least three thousand miners ; and a more motley, 
heterogeneous and lawless horde of vagabonds 
and adventurers never invaded the Chinese Em- 
pire. There were wandering Tungus from the 
mountains of Transbaikalia; runaway Rus- 
sian laborers from the east- Siberian mines of 
Butin Brothers, Niemann, and the Zea Company ; 
Buriats and Mongols from the province of 
Irkutsk; discharged government clerks and re- 
tired ispravniks^ from Nerchinsk, Stretinsk, 
Verkhni Udinsk, and Chita; exiled Polish Jews 
from the Eussian Pale of Settlement; Chinese 
laborers and teamsters from Kiakhta and Maima- 
chin; a few nondescript Koreans, Tatars, and 
Manchus from the lower Amur ; and finally, more 
than one thousand escaped convicts — thieves, 
burglars, highwaymen, and murderers — from the 
silver-mines of Nerchinsk and the gold-mines of 
Kara. 
As the valley of the Zhelta lies outside the lim- 

3 Local officials who act as chiefs of police and magis- 
trates in a Russian district, 

294 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

its and beyond the jurisdiction of Russia, and is 
separated by hundreds of miles of trackless wil- 
derness from the nearest administrative center in 
China, its invaders were not subject to any 
authonty nor bound by any law ; and its history, 
for a time, was little more than a record of quar- 
reling, claim-jumping, fighting, robbery, and 
murder. Gradually, however, the better class of 
Russian miners, impelled by the instinct of asso- 
ciation and cooperation which is so marked a 
characteristic of the Slavonic race, began to or- 
ganize themselves into artels, whose members 
contributed equally to the common treasury, 
worked together for the common weal, shared 
alike in the product of their industry, and de- 
fended as a body their individual and corporate 
rights. As these little groups or associations, 
united by the bond of a common interest, began 
to grow stronger and more coherent, they took 
counsel together and drew up a series of regula- 
tions for the uniform government of the artels 
and for the better protection of their members. 
These regulations, however, did not have the 
force of a constitution, binding upon all citizens 
of the camp, nor were they intended to take the 
place of a civil or criminal code. They re- 
sembled rather, in form and effect, the by-laws of 

295 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

a chartered corporation ; and they had no recog- 
nized or enforceable validity, outside the limits 
of the artels that adopted and sanctioned them. 
In the camp at large, every man who was not a 
member of an artel defended himself and his 
property as best he could, without regard to law 
or authority. For some months after the estab- 
lishment of the camp there was no law except the 
law of might, and no recognized authority other 
than the will of the strongest ; but as the feeling 
of solidarity, fostered by the artels, gradually 
permeated the whole mass of the population, an 
attempt was made to establish something like a 
general government. The logic of events had 
convinced both honest men and criminals that 
unless they secured life and property within the 
limits of the camp, they were all likely to starve 
to death in the course of the winter. Traders 
would not come there with food, and merchants 
would not open shops there, unless they could be 
assured of protection for themselves and safety 
for their goods. Such assurance could be given 
them only by an organized government, willing 
and able to enforce the provisions of a penal code. 
At the suggestion, therefore, of some of the artels, 
the whole body of miners was invited to assemble 

296 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

in what is known to the Russian peasants as a 
shhod, a Slavonic variety of the New England 
town-meeting. At this skliod, which was largely 
attended, the situation was fully and noisily dis- 
cussed. Robbery and murder were declared to 
be crimes of which the camp, as a community, 
must take cognizance ; a penal code was adopted, 
providing that robbers should be flogged and 
murderers put to death; and a committee of 
safety, consisting of one representative from the 
artels, one from the escaped convicts, and one 
from the unattached miners, was appointed to 
govern the camp, enforce the law, and act gener- 
ally as the executive arm of the shhod. 

The effect of this action was to diminish, for a 
time, the frequency of robbery and murder, and 
greatly to increase the population and promote 
the prosperity of the camp. The news that a 
government had been organized and three sta- 
rosts elected to maintain order and punish 
crime in the "Chinese California'' soon spread 
throughout eastern Siberia, and gave a fresh 
impetus to the tide of migration across the 
Manchurian frontier. Russian peasant farmers 
from Transbaikalia— a much better and stead- 
ier class than the runaway mining laborers— 

297 



THE ZHELTUGA EEPUBLIC 

caught tlie gold fever, and started for the camp ; 
merchants from Nerchinsk, Stretinsk, and Chita 
sent thither caravans of horses and camels laden 
with bales of dry goods, hardware, and pro- 
visions; actors, jugglers, gamblers, musicians, 
and amusement-purveyors of all sorts from the 
east-Siberian towns, joined in the universal rush, 
and before midwinter the gold-placer of Zhel- 
tuga, as it was then called, had grown into a 
rough, noisy, turbulent mining-town of more 
than ^Ye thousand inhabitants. 

To a traveler ascending the Zhelta Kiver from 
the Amur, in the autumn of 1884, the site of the 
town presented itself as a nearly level valley- 
bottom about a quarter of a mile in width, strewn 
with water-w^orn boulders and heaps of gravel 
from the pits and trenches of the gold-diggers, 
and bounded on its northwestern and southeast- 
ern sides by high hills covered with forests of 
spruce, pine, and silver birch. In the foreground 
was a flat, grassy plain, known to the miners as 
"Pitch-Penny Field,'' where the underlying 
gravel was not rich enough to pay for working, 
and where the surface, consequently, had not 
been much disturbed. From this field stretched 
away, on the right-hand side of the valley, under 
the shadow of the mountain, a double line of 

298 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

tents, yurts,* hologans,^ and log houses, to wliich 
the miners had given the name Millionaire Street, 
for the reason that it adjoined the richest part of 
the placer. This street was a mile and a half or 
more in length, and along it, at short intervals, 
were scattered the principal shops of the tow^n, 
each surmounted by a flag; twenty or thirty 
drinking-saloons with evergreen boughs nailed 
over their doors; and about a dozen hotels and 
"houses for arrivers,'^ whose rudely painted sign- 
boards bore such names as The Assembly, The 
Marseilles, The Zheltuga, The California, and 
The Wilderness Hotel. Filling the spaces be- 
tween the semi-public buildings, on both sides of 
the narrow, muddy street, stood the shedlike bar- 
racks of the artels, the flat-roofed, earth-banked 
yurts of the convicts, and the more carefully 
built houses of the well-to-do Russian peasants, 
all made of unhewn logs chinked with moss, and 
provided with windows of cheap cotton sheeting. 
But Millionaire Street, although it was the busi- 
ness and aristocratic quarter of the town, did not 
by any means comprise the whole of it. On the 

4 Quadrangular log huts, shaped like deeply truncated 
pyramids, and banked and roofed with sods or earth. 

5 Conical structures of logs, roughly resembling wigwams 
or tepees, and sometimes mounted on four high posts and 
reached by a ladder. 

299 



THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 

opposite or southeastern side of the valley there 
was a straggling encampment of skin tents, birch- 
bark lodges, and wretched hovels, tenanted by 
poor Chinese, Tungiis, and Buriats, who were em- 
ployed as day laborers by the artels; and from 
the southeastern end of Millionaire Street there 
was a thin, broken line of detached huts and 
cabins, extending up the Zhelta almost to its 
source. The camp, as a whole, therefore, occu- 
pied an area about a quarter of a mile wide and 
four miles long, with the head of the ravine at 
one end, Pitch-Penny Field at the other, and a 
desert of stones, gravel, ditches, flumes, and 
sluices between. 

At the beginning of the winter of 1884-85, 
there had been staked out, within the productive 
limits of the placer, about four hundred claims, 
more than two-thirds of which were being 
worked. The stratum of gravel and sand from 
which the gold was obtained probably formed at 
one time the bed of the Zhelta Kiver. It lay at 
an average depth of about twelve feet, under a 
covering of alluvial soil known to the miners as 
torfy which, doubtless, in the course of ages, 
had been gradually washed down into the valley 
from the circumjacent hills. This thick super- 
ficial layer of torf had to be removed, of course, 

300 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

before the auriferous sand could be reached ; and 
as the labor of taking it away was very great, all 
the individual miners, and nearly all the artels, 
had adopted what was then known in Siberia as 
the ortay or subterranean method of working a 
deep placer. By this method, the torf, instead of 
being removed, was undermined. The digger 
sunk a shaft to the bottom of the auriferous 
stratum, and then drove tunnels through the pay- 
gravel in every direction to the boundary lines of 
his claim, leaving the torf intact above as a roof, 
and supporting it, if necessary, with timbers. 
The gravel taken out of these subterranean tun- 
nels and chambers was hoisted to the surface 
through the shaft by means of a large wooden 
bucket attached either to a windlass or to an old- 
fashioned well-sweep, and the gold was then sep- 
arated from the sand by agitation with water in 
shallow pans, troughs, or cradles. The pay- 
gravel of Zheltuga yielded, on an average, about 
four ounces of gold per ton; and the precious 
metal was worth on the spot from twelve to six- 
teen dollars an ounce. In many cases the yield 
was much greater than this. One fortunate dig- 
ger unearthed a mass of virgin gold weighing five 
pounds; and lucky finds of nuggets varying in 
weight from one ounce to ten ounces were of fre- 

301 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

quent occurrence. Even in parts of the placer 
that were comparatively barren isolated "pock- 
ets" were sometimes found that yielded gold at 
the rate of twelve ounces to the Russian pood, or 
more than fifty-five pounds to the ton. In the 
early part of 1885 it was estimated that the Zhel- 
tuga placer, as a whole, was yielding about 
thirty-five pounds of gold per day, and the ac- 
cumulated stock on hand weighed 3600 pounds 
and represented a cash value of nearly |1,000,000. 
The currency of the camp, for the most part, 
was gold-dust, which, when transferred from 
hand to hand, was weighed in improvised bal- 
ances with ordinary playing-cards. An amount 
of dust that would just balance four cards, of 
standard size and make, was everywhere accepted 
as a zolotnik,*^ and the zolotnik was valued at 
about $1.75. One card of dust, therefore, repre- 
sented forty-four cents. This was practically 
the unit of the Zheltuga monetary system ; but if 
a buyer or seller wished to give or receive a 
smaller sum than this, the card used as a weight 
was cut into halves or quarters, — a method that 
suggests the "bit'' of the American miners on the 
Pacific Coast. A pound of sugar, for example, 
was valued in the Zheltuga currency at "two 

6 One ninety-sixth part of a pound troy. 

302 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

bits" of a quartered playing-card ; that is, at one- 
eighth of a zolotnik in dust. Russian paper 
money circulated to some extent, hut the supply 
was insufficient, and gold-dust was the ordinary 
medium of exchange. 

Once a week, on Saturday, the lower part of 
the valley, near Pitch-Penny Field, was turned 
into a great market or bazaar, where traders and 
Cossacks from the neighboring settlements sold 
meat, flour, hard-bread, tea, sugar, soap, candles, 
clothing, and hardware, and where thousands of 
miners, from all parts of the placer, assembled to 
purchase supplies. In no other place and at no 
other time could the population and life of the 
great mining-camp be studied to better ad- 
vantage. The field was dotted with white cotton 
tents and rude temporary booths, erected to shel- 
ter the goods of the traders; scores of telegas, 
filled with produce and provisions, were drawn 
up in long parallel lines, with shaggy Cossack 
ponies tethered to their muddy wheels; the stri- 
dent music of hand-organs and concertinas called 
the attention of the idle and the curious to yurts 
and hologans where popular amusement was fur- 
nished in the form of singing, juggling, or tum- 
bling ; and in and out among these tents, booths, 
wagons, and hologans surged a great horde of 

303 



THE ZHELTUGA EEPUBLIC 

rough, dirty, unshaven miners: some munching 
bread or cold meat as they elbowed their way 
from one booth to another; some crowding 
around a wagon loaded with apples and dried 
Chinese fruits from the valley of the Ussuri; 
some stuffing their multifarious purchases into 
big gray bags of coarse Siberian linen; and all 
shouting, wrangling, or bargaining in half a 
dozen Asiatic languages. 

No American mining-camp, probably, ever pre- 
sented such an extraordinary diversity of types, 
costumes, and nationalities as might have been 
seen any pleasant Saturday afternoon in that 
Manchurian market. Thin-faced, keen-eyed Pol- 
ish Jews, in skull-caps and loose black gabar- 
dines, stood here and there in little stalls 
exchanging Kussian paper money for gold-dust, 
which they weighed carefully with dirty playing- 
cards in apothecaries' balances ; sallow, beardless 
Tungus hunters, whose fur hoods, buckskin 
tunics, and tight leather leggings showed that 
they had just come from the mountain fastnesses 
of Transbaikalia, offered gloves, mittens, and 
squirrel-skin blankets to red-shirted Russian 
peasants in flat caps and high-topped boots; 
wrinkle-eyed Mongol horsemen, dressed in flap- 
ping orange gowns and queer dishpan-shaped felt 

304 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

hats, rode through the crowded market-place on 
wiry ponies, leading long files of solemn, swaying 
camels laden with goods from Verkhni Udinsk or 
Nerchinski Zavod ; uniformed Siberian Cossacks, 
standing at the tail-boards of the small four- 
wheeled wagons in which they had brought rye 
flour and fresh fish from the Amur, exchanged 
loud greetings or rough jokes with the runaway 
convicts who strolled past, smoking home-made 
cigarettes of acrid Circassian tobacco rolled in 
bits of old newspaper; and now and then, 
strangely conspicuous in black frock coat and 
civil service cap, might be seen a retired isprav- 
nik, or a government clerk from Chita, buying 
tea and white loaf sugar at the stall of a Chinese 
trader. 

On the outskirts of the bazaar amusements and 
diversions of all kinds were provided in abun- 
dance, and from half a dozen different directions 
came the discordant music of hand-organs and 
balalaikas "^ calling attention to lotteries, peep- 
shows, exhibitions of trained Chinese monkeys, 
and large circular tents in which acrobats and 
tumblers performed feats of strength or agility 
before crowds of shouting and applauding spec- 

7 A Russian variety of guitar, with three or four strings 
and a triangular sounding-board of thin seasoned wood. 

305 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

tators. In one place, a liuge tiger, caught in a 
trap on the lower Amur and confined in an iron 
cage, was an object of wonder and admiration to 
a throng of swarthy, bullet-headed Buriats; in 
another, a professional equestrian in dirty 
spangled tights exhibited the horsemanship of 
the haute ecole to a circle of hard-featured ruf- 
fians in gray overcoats, who were easily recogniz- 
able as escaped convicts from the Siberian mines, 
and who still wore on their backs, in the shape of 
two yellow diamonds, the badge of penal ser- 
vitude. 

Taken as a whole, the great bazaar, with its 
unpainted booths, its white cotton tents, its long 
lines of loaded wagons, its piles of merchandise, 
its horses, cattle, and double-humped Bactrian 
camels, its music, its vari-colored flags, and its 
diversified population of traders, miners, Cos- 
sacks, Russian peasants, runaway convicts, and 
Asiatic nomads, formed a picture hardly to be 
paralleled in all the Chinese Empire, and a pic- 
ture strangely out of harmony with the solemn 
mountains and primeval forests of the lonely 
Manchurian wilderness in which it was framed. 

The government of so heterogeneous and law- 
less a population as that assembled in the valley 
of the Zhelta presented, of course, a problem of 

306 



THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 

extraordinary difficulty ; and it is not at all sur- 
prising that the first attempt of the artels to pro- 
vide the camp with a civil administration proved 
to be a failure. The three starosts elected by 
the skhod were not men of much education or 
character; their authority was not backed, as it 
should have been, by an adequate police force; 
and even when their intentions were good and 
their orders judicious, they were virtually power- 
less to carry them into effect. The runaway con- 
victs from the mines in east Siberia, who com- 
po'sed at least a third of the whole population, 
soon discovered that the starosts had neither 
the nerve nor the power to enforce order and hon- 
esty in the only way in which they could be en- 
forced, — with the hangman's rope and the lash, — 
and therefore they promptly resumed their crim- 
inal activity. Theft, claim- jumping, fighting, 
and robbery with violence soon became as com- 
mon as ever; the influence and authority of the 
administration steadily declined as one board of 
starosts after another was discharged for cow- 
ardice or inefficiency; men of good character 
from the artels refused to take positions which 
no longer had even the semblance of dignity or 
power ; and finally the government itself became 
criminal, the latest board of starosts partici- 

307 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

pated in a crime and fled across the Siberian 
frontier with their plunder, and the camp re- 
lapsed again into virtual anarchy. 

This state of affairs continued for several 
weeks, in the course of which time no attempt 
was made either to reestablish the ineffective and 
discredited administration of the starosts, or to 
substitute for it a form of government better 
adapted to the circumstances of the case. Petty 
crimes of various sorts were committed almost 
daily in all parts of the placer ; but as the suffer- 
ers from them were, for the most part, the weaker 
and less influential members of the community, 
public feeling was not roused to the point of re- 
newed action until the latter part of December, 
1884, when a brutal murder, in the very heart of 
the camp, brought everybody to a sudden realiza- 
tion of the dangers of the situation. One of the 
members of an artel of escaped convicts, who was 
known to have had in his possession a consider- 
able quantity of gold-dust, was found one morn- 
ing in his tent, dead and cold, with his head and 
face beaten into an almost unrecognizable mass 
of blood, hair, brains, and shattered bones. 
From the position and appearance of the body, 
it was evident that the murderer had crept into 
the tent at a late hour of the night and killed his 

308 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

victim, while asleep, with repeated blows of a 
heavy sledge-hammer, which was found, lying in 
a pool of half -frozen blood, beside the bed. The 
dead man's gold-dust had disappeared, and there 
was no clue to the identity of the assassin. 

The news of this murder spread in a few hours 
to all parts of the placer; and thousands of 
miners, attracted either by morbid curiosity or 
by a desire to verify the statements they had 
heard, came to look at the disfigured corpse, and 
to discuss with one another means of preventing 
such crimes. In the absence of an authorized 
and responsible government, no one ventured to 
remove or bury the body, and for nearly a week 
it remained untouched, just where it had been 
found, as a ghastly and impressive object-lesson 
to the citizens of the camp. Meanwhile, the need 
of a strong and effective government, to maintain 
order, protect life, and punish crime, was ear- 
nestly and noisily discussed in hundreds of tents 
and cabins throughout the valley; and the out- 
come of the discussion was the calling of another 
skJiodj composed of delegates representing the 
four great classes into which the population of 
the camp was divided, — the artels, the convicts, 
the unattached miners, and the Asiatics. At 
this sJchod it was decided to organize a republican 

309 



THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 

form of government, with a single chief or presi- 
dent, who should be authorized to draft a code of 
laws, and who should be supported in the rigor- 
ous enforcement of them by the full armed 
strength of the camp. As the starosts elected 
under the previous regime had been common 
peasants, wholly without administrative experi- 
ence or training and almost wholly without edu- 
cation, and as the result of their efforts to main- 
tain order had been general dissatisfaction and 
disappointment, it was resolved that the presi- 
dent to be chosen in the second experiment should 
be a man of character and ability from the culti- 
vated class, and, if possible, a man who had had 
some experience as an administrative or execu- 
tive officer. The number of such men in the com- 
munity was extremely small; but among them 
there happened to be a retired government official 
— a clerk from one of the provincial departments 
of Siberia — named Fasse, whose personal bear- 
ing, dignity, and upright character had attracted 
general attention, and who had the respect and 
confidence of all the best men in the camp. 
Upon Fasse the choice of the skhod fell; and a 
deputation, bearing a plate of bread and a small 
cup of salt on a wooden tray, was sent to apprise 
him of the assembly's action, and to congratu- 

310 



THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIO ^ 

late Mm upon his unanimous election as ^^first 
President of the Zheltuga Republic." 

Fasse, who was not ambitious of distinction in 
this field, and who fully appreciated the serious 
nature of the responsibilities that would devolve 
upon the ^'first President," was disposed to de- 
cline the honor; but when the skhod agreed in 
advance to sanction any laws that he might sug- 
gest, to recognize and obey any assistants whom 
he might appoint, and to give him the fullest pos- 
sible cooperation and support, he decided that it 
was his duty, as a good citizen, to waive personal 
feeling, accept the position, and give the com- 
munity the benefit of all the knowledge and ex- 
perience he had. His first official act was to 
divide the territory which constituted the placer 
into ^ye districts (subsequently known as 
"states" ) , and to invite the residents of each dis- 
trict to elect two starshinaSy whose duty it should 
be to act in their respective localities as justices 
of the peace, and who should together constitute 
the President's Council. 

In the course of three or four days, starshinas 
were elected in all of the districts (two of them 
Chinese from the Asiatic quarter of the camp), 
certificates of election were duly signed and re- 
turned to the President, and the Council was 

311 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

summoned to draw up a code of laws and regula- 
tions for the government of the republic. The 
result of their deliberations was the following 
constitution, which was submitted to the skhod 
Sit a special meeting, and adopted without dis- 
sent : — 

On this day of , in the year of our 

Lord 188-, we, the Artels and Free Adventurers 
of the Zheltuga Command, imploring the bless- 
ing of Almighty God upon our undertaking, do 
hereby promise and swear implicit obedience to 
the authorities elected by us at this skhody and 
to the rules and regulations drawn up by them 
for the government of the camp, as follows : — 

1. The territory belonging to the Zheltuga 
Command shall be known as the "Amur Cali- 
fornia,'' and shall be divided into five districts or 
states. 

2. The officers of the republic shall be a Pres- 
ident and ten starshinas, who shall be elected by 
the skhod, and who shall hold office for a period 
of four months, or until the skhod relieves them 
from duty. Executive and judicial authority, in 
each one of the five districts, shall be vested in two 
starshinaSy and the ten starshinas together shall 
constitute the President's Council. These offi- 

312 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

cers of the government shall wear on their left 
arms, as evidence of their official authority, brass 
badges bearing in incised letters the words "Star- 

shina of the Amur California, th District." 

The President shall receive a salary of four hun- 
dred rubles, and each starshina a salary of two 
hundred rubles, per month. 

3. Every artel and every miner in the camp 
shall come to the assistance of the starshinas at 
the first call, by night or day, and shall aid them 
in enforcing the law and maintaining order. Co- 
operation in the infliction of punishment for 
crime, under direction and by order of the Pres- 
ident, the Council, or the starshinas^ shall be an 
imperative obligation of every citizen. 

4. The lightest punishment that shall be in- 
flicted for an offense committed within the terri- 
torial limits of the Amur California shall be ban- 
ishment from the camp without right of return. 
More serious crimes shall be punished by flog- 
ging, with whip or rods, the number of blows to 
be proportioned to the criminaPs health or 
strength, but not to exceed in any case five hun- 
dred. Murder shall be punished in accordance 
with the Mosaic law of "an eye for an eye,'' and 
the murderer shall be put to death in the same 
manner and with the same weapon that he em- 

313 



THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 

ployed in killing his victim. Every sentence of 
the authorities shall be executed, if possible, 
forthwith, and in no case shall punishment be de- 
layed more than twenty-four hours. 

5. Starshinas, in their respective districts, 
shall have the right to punish, up to one hun- 
dred blows, at their own discretion and without 
consulting either the President or the Council; 
but they shall make to the President, at a fixed 
hour every day, a report of all such cases, and 
an official statement of the condition of affairs in 
their districts. 

6. The authorities shall have the right to put 
any person suspected of criminal conduct under 
the surveillance of any artel or individual, pay- 
ing the latter for such supervision at the rate of 
one ruble per day; and the artel or individual 
shall be held responsible for such suspect's safe- 
guard and good behavior. 

7. The selling of spurious and manufactured 
gold, and also the wearing of a starshina's badge 
without authority, as a means of intimidating or 
extorting money from any person, shall be pun- 
ished with ^ye hundred blows of a blackthorn 
rod. 

8. In gambling with cards, the wagering of 
clothing, tools, implements, or other like objects 

314 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

of absolute necessity is strictly prohibited, upon 
penalty of severe punishment, as is also the 
pledging or pawning of such objects for a loan or 
debt. 

9. The firing of a gun or pistol at any hour of 
the day or night, without sufficient and legal 
cause, and the carrying of deadly weapons while 
in a state of intoxication, are strictly forbidden. 

10. Among those who have recently come to the 
Amur California, ostensibly to work, are a large 
number of persons who have no regular occupa- 
tion, and who hang about restaurants and sa- 
loons, living a drunken and disorderly life or 
maintaining themselves by dishonest card-play- 
ing. Their evil example exerts a demoralizing 
influence upon the great mass of honest and in- 
dustrious miners, and the citizens of the camp 
are requested, in their own interest and for the 
sake of public tranquillity, to point out such per- 
sons to the authorities, in order that they may be 
banished from the placer. 

11. Every artel or individual miner 'who em- 
ploys, or ostensibly employs, laborers shall per- 
sonally see that such laborers are actually at 
work, or shall make a report of them to the dis- 
trict starshinas, so that the latter may either set 
them at work or expel them from the settlement. 

315 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

12. In view of the fact that many persons who 
have come here are unable, for various reasons, to 
acquire mining territory or find work, and are 
therefore in a suffering condition, and in view of 
the further fact that certain artels are nominally 
in possession of much more territory than they 
are able to develop, it has been decided to regard 
all unoccupied and unworked claims as public 
lands, and to distribute them among honest and 
sober citizens who have not been able to find 
either work or unclaimed ground. Such distri- 
bution will begin in seven days from the date 
hereof. Henceforth the number of claims that 
artels will be permitted to hold in reserve with- 
out development shall be limited to two for an 
artel of nine men, four for an artel of eighteen 
men, and six for an artel of twenty-seven men. 
Eelying upon the generosity and humanity of all 
Eussians, the government hereby gives notice 
that undeveloped and unworked claims held by 
artels in excess of the numbers above set forth 
will hereafter be treated as public lands, and 
will be distributed in accordance with the best 
interests of the community among the poorer 
members thereof. 

13. A fund to defray the expenses of the gov- 
ernment shall be raised by means of taxes im- 

316 



THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 

posed at the discretion of the skhod upon all 
liquor-sellers, restaurant-keepers, traders, and 
merchants. 

14. Every person who has a store, shop, or 
trading-place within the limits of the placer shall 
cause a flag to be displayed on the building in 
which such business is carried on. Failure to do 
so within three days from the date hereof shall 
be punished with a fine of from twenty-five to one 
hundred rubles. 

15. Every merchant or trader who pays a tax 
or license fee for the right to carry on his busi- 
ness shall obtain from the person authorized to 
collect the tax a duly executed receipt for the 
same, bearing the seal of the government and the 
signature of the President, and shall post this 
receipt in a prominent place in his shop, store, 
restaurant, or saloon. 

16. The sale of spirituous liquor within the 
limits of the camp by persons who have no reg- 
ular place of business is strictly and absolutely 
forbidden. Persons who have regular places of 
business shall not sell spirituous liquor until 
they have obtained special permission to do so. 
For every bottle sold without such permission 
the seller shall pay a fine of from twenty -five to 
one hundred rubles. 

317 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

17. The laws of the Zheltuga Free Adventurers 
shall apply without exception to all citizens of 
the camp, regardless of rank, condition, national- 
ity, or previous allegiance. Offlcers of the gov- 
ernment, however, chosen by election, shall not 
be punished for illegal actions until they shall 
have been tried by the Council, found guilty, and 
dismissed from the service. They shall then be 
tried and punished as private citizens under the 
general law. 

18. Every artel or individual coming hereafter 
within the territorial limits of the Amur Cali- 
fornia shall appear within three days at the head- 
quarters of the government to read and sign these 
laws. Those who fail to make such appearance 
within three days from the time they cross the 
Amur will be proceeded against as persons un- 
willing to submit to the authority and obey the 
laws of the Zheltuga Command of Free Ad- 
venturers of the Amur California. 

19. As evidence that the President and star- 
shinas referred to herein have been chosen by us 
of our own free will, we append hereto our signa- 
tures, and we hereby promise to treat them with 
honor and respect. Those of us who fail to do 
so shall be severely punished as disturbers of the 
peace and insulters of the officers whom the Com- 

318 



THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 

mand has trusted as honest and impartial 
guardians of its safety and tranquillity. 
(Signed) 



Electors. 

Five copies of the constitution, or code of laws, 
were prepared in manuscript, and delivered to 
the starshinas of the five districts, who called 
local meetings and read the documents aloud to 
the electors. They were then signed by repre- 
sentatives of the latter and returned to the Presi- 
dent, who affixed to them the seal of the Amur 
California, and deposited them in a place of se- 
curity as the organic law of the Chinese republic. 

With the beginning of the year 1885 the new 
government entered upon the discharge of its 
duties, and the inevitable conflict arose between 
law and authority on one side and lawlessness 
and crime on the other. If there were any doubt 
of the ability of the new administration to main- 
tain its existence and enforce its decrees, such 
doubt was speedily removed by the boldness, 
promptness, and energy with which the new offi- 
cials acted. Supported by a majority of the citi- 
zens backed by a strong posse comitatuSy smd ac- 
companied by an adequate force of zealous execu- 

319 



THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 

tioners, the starshinas patrolled their districts 
from morning to night, listening to complaints, 
settling disputes, punishing crimes, and adminis- 
tering justice generally in accordance with the 
summary processes of a drum-head court-martial. 
Evil-doers who thought they could deal with the 
starshinas as they had dealt with their predeces- 
sors, the starosts, soon discovered their mistake. 
The new officials enforced order and justice, by 
means of the lash, without fear, favor, or mercy, 
and punishment followed crime with as much 
certainty as if the sequence were a fixed law of 
nature. 

The place of execution was a frozen pond in the 
lower part of the valley, near Pitch-Penny Field, 
where half a dozen able-bodied Kussian peasants, 
armed with flexible rods and formidable rawhide 
whips, carried the decrees of the starshinas into 
effect. The regular formula of condemnation 
was, "To the ice with him !'' And from this sen- 
tence there was no appeal. The criminal thus 
condemned was taken forthwith to the frozen 
pond, and, after having been stripped to the hips, 
was laid, face downward, on the ice. One execu- 
tioner then sat on his head, another on his legs, 
and a third, with a rod or rawhide plet, covered 
his naked back with the crisscross lacing of 

320 



THE ZHELTUGA EEPUBLIC 

swollen crimson stripes which is known to Si- 
berian hard-labor convicts as "the bloody grid- 
iron." 

In the sentences of the starshinas no partiality 
whatever was shown to criminals of any partic- 
ular class or social rank. For stealing a keg of 
hard-bread a Russian peasant was given five hun- 
dred blows with a birch rod, and was then ex- 
pelled from the camp; but at the same time a 
clerk for a well-known firm of Blagoveshchinsk 
merchants, a gentleman and a man of some edu- 
cation, received two hundred blows for unneces- 
sarily firing a revolver. Doubtless in many cases 
the punishments inflicted were cruel and exces- 
sive, but desperate ills required desperate reme- 
dies, and in dealing with a heterogeneous popula- 
tion, composed largely of runaway convicts from 
the Siberian mines, it was thought better to err 
on the side of severity than to show a leniency 
that might be attributed to weakness or fear. 

For a period of two weeks or more the dread 
order: "To the ice with him!" might have been 
heard almost hourly in every part of the camp, 
and the snow on the frozen pond was trampled 
hard by the feet of the executioners and stained 
red with blood from the lacerated backs of con- 
demned criminals. But the dishonest and dis- 

321 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

orderly class finally learned its lesson. After 
three men had been put to death, scores expelled 
from the settlement, and hundreds mercilessly 
flogged with rods or the plet, even the boldest and 
hardiest of the runaway convicts were cowed, and 
the whole population of the camp was brought 
for the first time to a realization of the fact that 
a government resting on the will and consent of 
the governed, and supported by a posse comitatus 
of free citizens, may be quite as powerful and 
formidable in its way, and quite as great a terror 
to evil-doers, as a government based on the divine 
right of an anointed Czar, and supported by an 
armed force of soldiers and police. 

Before the 1st of February, 1885, the triumph 
of the honest and law-abiding class in the Amur 
California was virtually complete. The petty 
crimes which had so long harassed and disquieted 
the camp became less and less frequent; the su- 
premacy of the law was everywhere recognized 
with respect or fear; the experiment of popular 
self-government was admitted to be successful; 
and the skhod and its executive officers, having 
established order, were at liberty to turn their 
attention to minor details of civil organization. 
Adequate revenue for the support of the govern- 
ment was obtained by means of a judiciously 

322 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

framed tariff on imports ; a post-office department 
was organized, and provision made for a daily 
mail between the camp and the nearest station in 
Siberia; houses were built or set apart in the 
several districts for the accommodation of the 
starshinas and their clerks ; a free public hospital 
was opened, with a staff of two physicians and 
half a dozen nurses, and was maintained at a cost 
of nearly thirty thousand rubles a year; the 
organic law was revised and amended to accord 
with the results of later experience, and the gov- 
ernment of the republic gradually assumed a 
form which, if not comparable with that of older 
and more advanced communities, was at least 
more civilized and modern than that which then 
prevailed in Siberia. Intelligent and dispassion- 
ate Russians who had just come from the Amur 
California told me, when I met them at Chita, 
Nerchinsk, and Stretinsk in 1885, that life and 
property were absolutely safer in the Chinese re- 
public than in any part of the Russian empire. 
"Why,'' said one of them, "you may leave a heap 
of merchandise unguarded all night in the 
streets; nobody will touch it!" 

The first result of the establishment of a really 
strong and effective government in the valley of 
the Zhelta was a remarkable increase in the pop- 

323 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

ulation and the prosperity of the camp. Miners, 
prospectors, merchants, mechanics, and "free ad- 
venturers" flocked to it from all parts of eastern 
Siberia. New gold-fields were discovered and 
developed in neighboring valleys ; a large area of 
new territory was annexed; new administrative 
districts were organized; and before the 1st of 
June, 1885, the Chinese republic had a population 
of more than ten thousand free citizens, includ- 
ing six hundred women and children, and con- 
tained fifty hotels, three hundred shops and 
stores, and nearly one thousand inhabited build- 
ings. 

The development of so strong and well organ- 
ized a community as this in the wildest part of 
Manchuria, absolutely without advice, assistance, 
or encouragement from any outside source, is an 
interesting and noteworthy proof of the capacity 
of the Eussian people for self-government, and it 
is for this reason, mainly, that the story has 
seemed to me worth telling. Here was a popula- 
tion as heterogeneous, as uneducated, and as law- 
less as could be found anywhere in the Russian 
Empire. Nearly a third of it consisted of actual 
criminals, of the worst class, from the Siberian 
mines and penal settlements, and fully a quarter 
of the non-criminal remainder were ignorant 

324 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

Asiatics, belonging to half a dozen different tribes 
and nationalities. Never, perhaps, was the ex- 
periment of popular self-government tried under 
more unfavorable conditions. The experiment- 
ers had no precedents to guide them, no record of 
previous success to encourage them, and, at first, 
no trained or educated men to lead them. Rely- 
ing solely on the good sense and self-control of 
the majority, they extended the right of suffrage 
to criminals and Asiatics as well as to honest 
men and Russians, summoned a sTcJiod in which 
every citizen of the camp had a voice and a vote, 
gave the criminals and aliens their share of 
official authority by electing two convicts and 
two Chinese as members of the Council, and then, 
on the basis of manhood suffrage, free speech, 
equal rights, and the will of the majority, they 
established their republic, enacted their laws, and 
carried to a successful termination their unique 
experiment. As an evidence of the ability of the 
Siberian people to govern themselves, and as an 
indication of the form which their institutions 
would be likely to take if they could escape from 
the yoke of the Russian despotism, the history 
of the Amur California seems to me to be full of 
interest and instruction. But be that as it may, 
it is certainly a curious and significant fact that 

325 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

the first true republic ever established east of 
the Caspian Sea and the Urals was founded by 
representatives of the most despotically governed 
nation in Europe, upon the territory of the least 
progressive and the least enterprising nation in 
Asia, and was modeled after the government of 
the strongest and most successful nation in 
America. 

What would have been the future of the Chi- 
nese republic if the Zheltuga Free Adventurers 
had been left to their own devices we can only 
conjecture. They had already demonstrated 
their ability to deal successfully with internal 
disorders, and if their growth and progress had 
not been checked by external forces too strong to 
be resisted, they might ultimately have conquered 
and occupied a large part of northern Man- 
churia; but of course neither Russia nor China 
could afford to permit the establishment of a free 
and independent state in the valley of the Amur. 
China protested against the invasion of her terri- 
tory as soon as she became aware of it, and called 
upon the governor-general of the Amur to inter- 
fere. The latter simply replied that the invasion 
was unauthorized; that he had no control over 
the invaders, who were a mere horde of vagrants 
and runaway convicts; and that the Chinese 

326 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

authorities were at liberty to treat them as bri- 
gands and drive them out of the country. This, 
however, the Chinese authorities were utterly 
unable to do : partly because they had no force in 
northern Manchuria strong enough to cope with 
the Zheltuga Free Adventurers, and partly be- 
cause the region occupied by the latter was an 
almost inaccessible wilderness. All that they 
could do was to send an officer up the Amur, 
with a small escort, to find out exactly where the 
invaders were, to ascertain their strength, and to 
threaten them with severe punishment if they 
refused to withdraw. 

This was done in the winter of 1884-85, soon 
after the organization of the republic and the 
election of Fasse as President. A Chinese of- 
ficial, with an escort of thirty-six soldiers, came 
up the Amur from Aigun on the ice, visited the 
camp, and found, to his surprise, that it con- 
tained a population of more than seven thousand 
men, fully one-third of whom were armed. See- 
ing that it would be futile, if not dangerous, to 
threaten so strong and well organized a com- 
munity as this, the Chinese envoy had a brief 
interview with President Fasse, and a few days 
later, without having accomplished anything, re- 
turned to Aigun. The Chinese government 

327 



THE ZHELTUGA EEPUBLIC 

thereupon renewed its protest, and insisted that 
Kussia should take adequate measures to compel 
the withdrawal of the Free Adventurers from 
Manchurian territory. Protests and complaints 
were also received from district governors, pro- 
prietors of mines, and influential citizens in 
various parts of eastern Siberia, who alleged 
that the Manchurian gold fever was exciting and 
demoralizing the Siberian population; that the 
export of provisions tO' the Chinese republic was 
raising the prices and increasing the scarcity of 
food products in all the adjacent Siberian prov- 
inces ; and that if the emigration to Manchuria 
were not speedily checked, work in many of the 
Siberian mines would have to be suspended for 
want of laborers. 

At a conference of the territorial governors of 
Irkutsk, the Amur, and Transbakalia, held 
at Blagoveshchinsk early in the summer of 1885, 
these protests and complaints were duly consid- 
ered, and a decision was reached to break up the 
Chinese republic by cutting off its supply of pro- 
visions. A few weeks later, Captain Sokolofski, 
with an adequate force of cavalry, was sent from 
Chita to Ignashina, with orders to establish a 
military cordon along the Siberian frontier from 
Albazin to the mouth of the river Shilka, to 

328 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

arrest all persons attempting to cross that fron- 
tier in either direction, to confiscate the gold or 
merchandise found in their possession, and to 
take such other steps as might be necessary to 
compel the withdrawal of all Russian subjects 
from Chinese territory. This was a death-blow 
to the Chinese republic. Its population of more 
than ten thousand persons, relying upon its abil- 
ity to procure supplies from the north, had made 
no attem]3t to cultivate the soil, and it could not 
maintain itself in the Manchurian wilderness for 
a single month after its communications with 
Siberia had been severed. Fasse, the President 
of the republic, was ordered by the Russian gov- 
ernment to resign his position and return to his 
country upon pain of penal servitude; the star- 
shinaSy deprived suddenly of their chief, and 
apprehensive of future punishment for them- 
selves, became demoralized and abandoned their 
posts; while the panic-stricken Free Adventur- 
ers, hoping to evade the cordon by crossing the 
Amur above or below it, packed up hastily their 
gold-dust, merchandise, and other valuables, and 
silently vanished in the forests. In less than a 
week the population of the Amur California had 
fallen from ten thousand to three thousand, and 
in less than a month the camp had been virtually 

329 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

abandoned by all except a few hundred desperate 
runaway convicts, who preferred the chance of 
starvation in Manchuria to the certainty of 
arrest and deportation to the mines in Siberia. 

The Chinese made no attempt to occupy the 
almost deserted gold placer until December, 
1885, when they sent a force of manegri, or fron- 
tier cavalry, up the Amur River on the ice, with 
orders to drive out the remaining miners and 
destroy the camp. The soldiers reached their 
destination, in a temperature of thirty degrees 
below zero, on the 6th of January, 1886. The 
only occupants of the place at that time were 
about three hundred runaway convicts, fifty or 
sixty Chinese and Manchus, and a few Russian 
peasants lying ill in the hospital. The convicts, 
at the approach of the troops, formed in a com- 
pact body on Pitch-Penny Field and boldly 
marched out to meet the enemy, playing a march 
on three battered clarionets, and carrying high 
above their heads, on a cross-shaped flagstaff, a 
sort of ecclesiastical banner made out of a white 
cotton sheet, upon w^hich they had painted rudely 
in huge black capital letters the words 

WE 

ALEXANDER 

THIRD. 

330 



THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 

The Chinese cavalry, overawed by this extraor- 
dinary banner, or perhaps uncertain as to the 
result of a contest with the desperate ruffians 
who carried it, allowed the convicts to pass with- 
out molestation, and they marched away in the 
direction of the Amur, keeping step to the music 
of the clarionets, and relying upon the protec- 
tion of a flag which combined the majesty of the 
Czar with the sanctity of an emblem of truce. 

When the convicts had disappeared in the 
forest, the Chinese entered the camp with fire 
and sword, burned all its buildings to the 
ground, and put every living occupant to death, 
— not sparing even the sick in the hospital. 
Some were beheaded, some were stabbed and 
thrown into the flaming ruins of the burning 
buildings, and a few were stripped naked, tied to 
trees, and showered with bucketful after bucket- 
ful of cold water from the Zhelta River, until 
death had put an end to their sufferings, and 
their stiffened bodies had become white statues 
of ice. When the sun rose over the wooded Man- 
churian hills on the following morning, a few 
hundred piles of smoking ruins and a few 
ghastly naked bodies tied to trees and incased 
in shrouds of ice were all that remained of the 
Chinese republic. 

331 



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